Out Like a Wet Simile

It's a raw rainy night out there. Evocative. I'm afraid crimes are being committed as the clock nudges toward midnight. Maybe not, but it suggests footsteps behind you, matching your gait, someone comfortable in the pages of a whodunit.  Reminds me of the night I was walking around Chestnut Hill Reservoir when I lived in Brighton. I heard a noise behind me. I walked faster. So did whatever was behind me. I began to run. It matched my pace. Faster—same. I finally stopped and turned around, stiff with fear. I had tangled up with some cast-off fishing line and a few noisy items of junk, all hitchhiking along.

"I am the viper! I'm here to vipe your vindows!"

This is March going out like a lamb who should be in a warm barn snuggled against some fleecy hay-mate, dreaming of certified public accountants vaulting over a cubicle, but instead is picking its way along the rainy street, bleating piteously. Not pitiously, more piteous than that. Wet wool. What's worse? I'll tell you what. Woof! Lamb pursued by the Hound of the Baskervilles across the dread moors. Finally, exhausted, it turns to face its dogged pursuer, get it? hoping to find a fishing line tangled up with a read-aloud baby book of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, read by Benedict Cumberbatch, whose name makes baby laugh. Instead—worse. Lamb faces a lion, whom he/she/it must somehow persuade that they are one and the same, that the leonine days of early March have evolved quite naturally into the docile temperament of a lamb, and furthermore this is lamb's territory, this is late March, the last day, what are you even doing here, you maned interloper? And it works, the lion backs away, embarrassed, feeling cub-foolish, while the lamb advances, fleece dripping, having found its Inner Ram. But do not push your advantage too far, young ovine, for there is a joke circling overhead about pulling the wool over your eyes, and it's I must now be going to beddie-bye.

So enjoy your moor, even if it's a dream and you're really in that cozy barn after all, and it's the CPA's who have to make it home in the dark and the wet. 

Good night, flock, and good luck.