Posts for June 25, 2021 (page 6)

I know there’s a knife under the suds in the sink.

I knew today was trash day but didn’t take it out.

I watch the garbagemen empty my neighbor’s bin.

The baby sparrows haven’t left their nest in my porch fern.

Yesterday, the bluebird on the walking path hopped sideways away from me. 

Driving home, I could make out “MACK” on the grill of the logging truck as it roared past me.

My Internet went down.

I turned the AC on and opened my bedroom window.

These clouds aren’t going to rain.

My tomato plants bear green marbles.

My basil is still an inch tall.

I pour out the bottom half of my coffee cup.

The milk left from my bowl of Lucky Charms is the color of a bruise.

I woke up tired again.

Content To eat grass

Cows don’t look over their fence

They know how to *be*

Has been empty going on four years.
Shocking both of us, you unwillingly departed
from a swift illness.
In the beginning, we spooned or you curled
me under your protective wing.
As kids came and jobs pulled at us
we slept fetal back to back.

I cannot invade or starfish your side.
It is sacred space to me.
I yearn to hear the soft sawing
of your breath.
Still saving your space.
I cannot face the finality
of you not slipping under 
the covers beside me.

valvoline man pulls an empty mouse nest
out from under the hood of my jeep
puts it in trashcan behind him
what was that? don’t worry about it
it happens all of the time
you’d be surprised. i am!
first, i drive this car everyday
it has high mileage you just said so
how did it survive? where is the mouse?
were there children in there???
what a nightmare for the mother
every morning that engine starts up
must shake her to her darling
little mousy bones-her shoulders
spin on the axle of her collarbone
as she scoops up what? 1,2,3, of them?
second, i live in town on a street of stray cats
whom have made quite a game of steals
under my lattice like toddlers on a slip and slide
birds scatter! why wouldn’t a little mouse?
OH DEAR GOD what if she runs back & forth
squeaking like metal in the pumpkin of my four wheel drive?
third, the man in the bay next to me
is rolling his eyes and mouthing the word
m-o-n-e-y while he rubs his fingers together
“HOW DID YOU EVEN DRIVE IT IN HERE?”
just change the oil and do the differential
isn’t that enough for you, daryl? isn’t that enough?

Grief is a thief,
stealing joy, creativity, life.  

Grief is a trickster,
lying in wait,
everchanging and evolving,  

Grief is a rollercoaster,
ascending to the heights of memory
and diving to the depths of despair.   

Grief is a blanket,
covering all with its darkness;
creating protection
from the world of the living.  

Grief is required,
a reminder of the depths of love,
the beauty of friendship,
the sanctity of life.

Tuesday morning at the corner store
I saw Diego wince as he reached
a flimsy wallet from the tattered pocket
of his signature work pants.

Before I could even ask, qué pasa
I glimpsed as his left arm
hung limp
from a collar swollen,
a cantaloupe on his shoulder,
under his shirt.

“A horse kick me on Wednesday”

“That’s been six days, Diego”

If he could have shrugged
he would have.

I said, “I’ll take you now.”
canceling my own work plans.
His eyes rounded at the thought
then quickly found the floor.
We’d been through this before.

Five hours later we left
the county clinic
with a script for lortab
no pharmacy would dare
to fill for an undocumented
farm hand.

The medical staff held their ground.
Diego wasn’t close enough to death
for them to do no harm,
damn them.
hippocratic hypocrites,
“no offense,”
was all the nurse could muster,
they didn’t even touch his arm.

On the ride back

home

his gaze was fixed
out the side window,
lush hills rolled to the horizon,
crops popping up as if the fields
had sprung a million verdant leaks.
It looked to him like steady work.
I hit a pot hole and he jerked.

Diego was a working drunk.
He never missed.  Could polish off
twelve cans and never slur his broken
words. His cerveza was Victoria.

But Sunday morning,
it was a fifth of gin
they found,
empty,
in the ditch,
beside him.

I came here for the wifi really.
I ordered a breakfast out of guilt
even though wifi service is free.

If I could be
on the lake in a boat that tilts
when you dive from the leaning tree,

I would experience poetry in motion
and write the form of it
in my head.

Instead,
I sit
in Dairy Queen with one notion…

Navigated by lightning bugs last night. Cardinals, crows, and clouds today.
Paying a small crumb of my dues to the Universe,
I leave you a small bag full of tart apples and an unopened box of
Cold and Flu gel caps purchased last spring: that distant moon.

Paying a small crumb of my dues to the Universe,
I’ve learned to find balance before I drop my breath:
Cold and Flu gel caps purchased last spring: that distant moon
doesn’t know what it’s gotten us all into, does it?

I’ve learned to find balance before I drop my breath:
stopped counting puddles and precipitation rates. A statistic
doesn’t know what it’s gotten us all into, does it?
It doesn’t matter how many feet designate a hill from a mountain.

Stopped counting puddles and precipitation rates. A statistic
true for a home state isn’t the same for a present or future state.
It doesn’t matter how many feet designate a hill from a mountain.
It matters how you make friends, when you lead, and when you follow.

I propped a box on a stick
above shiny new pennies,
hoping to catch a clumsy
leprechan. No luck. Nor did
I catch my father as he
tripped the trap, thinking he’d leave
wonder, not disappointment. 

Her death no surprise in some way.
A china doll of porcelain bones,
she ate a few bites of lettuce
and called it lunch.  No amount
of coiffing her carefully colored
hair could hide her fragility.
You knew one fall would shatter
her.  I feared for her aging body
and for my own.

Sometimes I wonder if car crashes
are just nature’s way to purge people
on their way out anyway,
like a big cat waiting for the slowest
antelope, the weakened ready
to be taken.  We choose, in some way,
don’t we, our deaths?  It would take
only a slight swerve of the wheel.