finches on dead branches

Two old metal laundry ladders, perhaps towers, stand mostly forgotten in the backyard, the electricity of their luster betrayed by brown rust. They divide and reorganize the buildings across the lot, one yard and another alleyway away: isosceles, trapezoid, exes, railroad tracks escaping into the distance. Our downstairs neighbors strung up the one closest my current window with a white clothes-line on the thirteenth rung from the top. I've not seen anything hung to dry in the past four months.

I'm most interested in the second figure, directly behind this first one, just to the left and separated by a stone wall that serves the neighborhood cats well - I often admire the black long-haired's light-as-a-feather walking routine. But structure number two, similar in all ways to the first and closest number one, can barely be seen as manmade. A witchy vine veils the top three-fifths and seems haphazard, though intentional, in its tangles. Several house finches hop from one stiff tendril to the next, as brown as the dormant mass; its verdancy must be restored in the Spring.

house finch, captured by Ed Gaillard

Today brought with it an unhappy mixture of snow and sleet, but the finches alighting on the dead branches of the vine oppose this grayish weather. I'll go and fetch my camera. No more wondering about how the towers will look from the fire landing underneath my windowpane.