Playing a Game in an Old Neighborhood

There was a house set well back from the street. With a neat green lawn framed by a black iron fence, there were twisty flourishes shaped into the metal. And I thought about how someone had come up with that design and crafted it to be beautiful. In the side yard of the house was an ancient giant of a tree,. An oak who was just beginning to bud as he had done so many springs before. A bedroom window just beside a long sideways jutting branch was open a few inches. Tiny black ants crawled over the buds, eating their sweet waxy nectar.