The Back Porch (#6)

   A gray curtain has been drawn over the world.  The sky is flat and cold, a pale stone ceiling. Even the bright colors of the trees are dimmed.
  The concrete slab juts out from the back of our apartment, a cold and lifeless extension of the warm room within, separated by thin sheets of sliding glass. The porch looks almost tawny in the clouded morning, spotted and marred with time. The railing strides around the perimeter, stolid and black in spite of the green and red seeping up from the concrete onto the iron. The porch is fenced in, but empty, guarding nothing, keeping no one in or out. Even the tiny tree that had adorned it in the summer has moved indoors to a warmer climate.
   Beyond the porch, the bushes are still. There is a slight stirring in the upper branches of the trees, a momentary fidget as they wait for the clouds to unleash or bestow whatever they have stored behind their impenetrable wall. The red of the creeping vines is muted, the riotous oranges and yellows in the trees seeming almost brown, their glow stolen from them . The sun is locked behind thick bars, beating uselessly against the backs of the clouds, warming them but not the earth.
   There is no stirring of bird today, no flashing tail of a squirrel darting from branch to branch. All is still. All is stifled, quieted, blanketed with chill air and gray light. All is asleep.