Squirrels and Shadows

Sun flickers in spaces between the breeze-
whipped branches and leaves,
and dancing curly willows
dapple the garden with shadows,
Out of his chiaroscuro camouflage,
a squirrel dashes
to the apple tree to root
among the ripened, wind-fall fruit.
He hauls his swag just a few feet
and stops to eat,
relieves the weight
and lumbers on a few feet
more, before he scrambles back into the grey
penumbra of an unripe autumn day.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Saturday’s Mix: Garden

Teresa welcomes us back to Saturday’s Mix. She tells us that she is in the middle of frantically canning tomatoes and chopping peppers from her garden. As gardening is all that she has on her mind, that’s what we’re going to look at this week. She wants us to grab hoes and garden gloves and give her our best writing about a garden–literal, figurative, metaphorical –whatever our hearts wish to grow, poetry or prose.