unknown feet, tax refund, reborn trees

1. Walking at night, through the lighted window of a house I see the soles of two bare feet pointing at me from a couch. Am I right that they're a little dirty, or is it just hard to see?

2. For two weeks a check from the United States Treasury has been on my desk. It's my tax refund: four dollars. Four dollars! Not worth the time spent going to the bank to cash it. Maybe I'll put it on the same pile with the photographs I've been meaning to frame and hang for a year.

3. Last winter, my neighbor cut off all the leaf-bearing branches of her two crepe myrtles, leaving only the upright multiple trunks, purplish gray, like two bundles of sticks rooted in the ground. This spring both trees are full-leafed and bursting with lilac-pink flowers. So that's why she did it!