The back lane, this new-year dawn, is littered, bleakly – tumbled bins, spent bottles, knuckled tabs, sodden boxes; hound shites, plastic wraps, a quilted headboard, yellowed hand towel; wrapping-paper tumbleweeds troubling parked cars; a bloody gown of herring gull (gutting something); and the last, the very last, or the first, Christmas tree, skulking and skittling on the breeze.
This tree (bell-shaped, truncated; skeletal, ugly) thing, appeared to be quite drunk, so I stepped aside as it careered from car to car, rolling among the debris. It cowered in the shadows, hid beneath windows, trying not to be seen.
But I seen it.
Some tines of tinsel, still spangling, were hanging from it. “Tinsel! In January!” I screamed into the glass of a vehicle, in the hubcap of the same, in the eye of a seagull, pitching from its ribboned cage: “Tinsel! I seen it!”
I nearly chased that dreadful tree. But, mostly I just barked (not barking, per se; cleared my throat, so to speak). I hoy’d a thumb at it though, and took a toe to it, too, and I slung a bottle of spent gin after it, that glanced off a wall, off a bonnet, off a wing and shattered, like magic, right next to it; sounding not unlike an axe strike. The cobbles sparkled.
I wronged it with, “Ho’way, foul tree!”
And that is the last I hope to see of it.
nickreeves 
genius MR, genius xoxo
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Onwards, Grady.
Onwards! “In January!”
🙂 Thank you xo
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Brilliant, Nick. Says it all.
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Thanks, Rick. I struggled to get my foot in the stirrup, but giddy-up!
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So damn good – all the best for 2021, Nick.
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Thank you.
The hours flew!
Happy new year, Eric.
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Excellent Nick!!!!
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Thanks, Bob! Appreciate this very much!
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Great start to the new year! Well done!
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Hope all is good with you, MM. Btw, I gifted one of your miniatures to a friend and the other (winter solstice) I keep as a bookmark. Thank you. xo
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Thank you, Nick! It’s always especially nice to know! 🙂
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Brilliant 😀 it sums it all up perfectly.
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Well, it was on the cards 🙂 Thanks, Morgan
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“It cowered in the shadows, hid beneath windows, trying not to be seen.
But I seen it.”
I laughed and it sounded like a bark. Spending too much time with the dog. Twelfth Night, Nick, may the kings keep you wise and well
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Happy epiphany, Kim.
Keep your faith in dog
(‘and a partridge in a pear tree’). xo
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Ah, the spent dreams of Christmas . . . (and unfulfilled promises). This piece is grim and depressing in the most delightful way. I loved it!
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Ha, thank you very much!
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You’re welcome! 😀
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Fantastic, Nick! An entertaining journey. You also have a way of turning a list of mundane objects into an interesting read. You reminded me of a time in middle school when a friend of mine dragged a discarded, but partially decorated tree, to school and set it up in the outdoor locker cage. Kids could never get away with that these days. The good old days. 😆
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You got to love a list, Michele 🙂
I suspect that the character in the back lane would applaud your middle school friend’s incarceration of the tree! “Try’na bring their old time joy round ‘ere, all twenty-twenty, like. I seen it.”
Thank you.
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