Warm Afternoon When Some Things Were Alive

In the sunny, colorful
Courtyard, a hunch-backed wire owl
Someone set out as decor

Watched a ball of dryer lint,
Blown about by the breezes,
Bounce past skittering lizards,

As if it, too, were alive,
Which it wasn’t, nor the owl.
Some potted plants were blooming,

And some potted plants were dead.
The house finches seemed nervous
In their trilling, but perhaps

A wire owl could unnerve them.
The shadows shifted slowly.
No bombs came out of the sky.