Every drop-off then was the smell of hot bread from the ovens behind the factory walls, made grey in the memory by it always being wet and dark, head-lights on. When I drive past the road today the smell of fresh baked bread still breaks out of those same walls, now Newberry’s Funeral Home, where the ovens are hotter and sealed tight. For no more than the symmetry, it’s at Newberry’s I can be dropped-off on a weekday, when there’ll be a fight for parks, and everyone oblivious to the smells and memories of years ago.
Tag Archives: mortality
Beneath Hikurangi
Cicadas singing in the fire of the sun. We used to think they lived so briefly and it was too easy for the mynahs to catch them in their yellow beaks, hold them for a moment, still singing; no wild struggle or hardly a change in pitch. After we learnt they lived for years underground, it wasn’t so bad. Now, listening to the cicadas in the crystal space of early summer, the hill, always there, cut-silhouette on the horizon, we’re happy enough in our grand mediocrity.