Bad Smells After Christmas

Ever since Christmas, malls have knocked off 20 percent from their original reduced prices. I hear Dean Martin crooning, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” his voice still trapped in rotation with other seasonal favorites. Other notables: I pulled into the parking lot of two Walmart stores in one day, sat at Denny’s for 45 minutes waiting for toast and jam. Best Western has stopped serving its guests yogurt, or coffee with chocolate chip cookies. I have an apple and I will survive. Duplicate prints of St Johns Bridge hang in my room, a motel with a standardized lack of imagination and a reduced budget. This morning, a TV reporter announced that the Hope Center in Gresham has lost all its funding. Clouds watercolor the sky in three shades of billowing gray. Winslow Homer painted the roughest seas he saw. Winter storms wash across the country with delayed and canceled  flights, too many records  broken and some have been made. We pick up the pieces of a difficult year not knowing what to do with them except to make collections. Blackened and redacted leftovers warm on the stove smelling badly of those who feasted on flesh, whooping it up at the predator’s table.