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This is Your Life A wood. All branches bare, except for the hundreds of tiny lizards hanging by their tails, crooked legs stretched out, feet like tiny hands reaching, bodies swaying in the almost visible breeze, black limbs, white sky, then a meadow, tall grasses, wildflowers, a wooden chair standing in the meadow, many-times-painted many colors, layer after layer, year after year, weather-crackled, bubbled, chipped and paled. You see him, Weather, an old craftsman in worn coveralls, bent over the chair, carefully working away with ancient tools, carving that valued antique patina, as if it had stood, unprotected in a grassy meadow, season after season, and now a vast lawn, green grass thick and mowed and made for croquet. A man sits in the grass beneath a tattered, useless umbrella, no shield from rain, no guard from sun, with its broken spines and ribboned cloth. The man sits cross- legged, the man with the head of a kangaroo sits on the croquet lawn, he hears the *crack!* of the mallet, the distant plummy voices arguing, exclaiming, laughing, and when you wake you still hear them, laughing. photo at http://www.sbpoet.com/2009/07/this-is-your-life.html -- sharon brogan http://www.sbpoet.com http://www.sbpoet.net http://smallpoems.sbpoet.net