Another birthday poem

Recess, 1963

A metallic whistle trailing a lanyard

clenched in the teeth of a willowy woman

in a camel hair coat, broad collar a flaring

cone against the cold slap of a late

November wind howling over the gray

sand playground, one hard pinch of a simple

machine, it’s only purpose to pierce the heart

of recess and spring the jaws of phonics

fallen silent somehow, the afternoon dumb

struck, grades one through six a snarl

of marbles colliding on tangled trajectories

our orderly universe suspended in bliss

one eternal moment longer before coalescing

around the rumor’s crushing gravity

the older kids huddled on the four square

court by the boiler room door, entranced  

by a cyclone of leaves, the world gone

topsy-turvey while I hang absolutely

still from my knees at the very top

of the monkey bars, gazing on earth

above and sky below, an arrangement

more to my liking, a fine place where

it turns out, your birthday was

already in full swing, jarred forever

into a delicate new arc.

For Sue

Another poem about dogs

Ring

Some dog you were, invisible

                 At night

Draped in a black serape

Topped with a frayed balaclava

Worn rakishly or slightly askew

           One

Only the antic silent film

Flicker of luminous orphaned

Legs to give you away

Phosphorescent afterglow

Of a calligraphic tail

Ghosting white at my margin

Of sight, sweep of the yard

Mullioned by the metronome  

Of the porch swing chain

With its parched dry

                               Bleat

You worried cows

With crumpled horns

Crumbled before

the overwhelming urge

to kill guileless rabbits

your methods improvised

                                       Slapdash

Kept to the scrim of shade

                      Bearding

The house in high summer

A big post and beam affair

Tin roof feeding a stone cistern

Three chimneys wide as player pianos

Perched high above tombs of hearths

Sealed shut ever since

The Rural Electrification Act of 1935

A mothballed Cunard liner

Plated in whitewashed

Clapboard, staterooms

abandoned starboard and aft

When Mamaw and Papaw

Took to the lifeboats

Paring it down to parlor and kitchen

where we’d sit listening for the milk truck

A.M. station out of Seymour

Broadcasting the morning

Farm report through the screen door

Where you sat rapt and swept

dew from the flagstone

waiting on breakfast  

“Skim milk, crusts, middlings, bits

of doughnuts, wheat cakes with drops

of maple syrup sticking

to them, potato skins, leftover custard

pudding with raisins, and bits

of Shredded Wheat.”  *

one warm summer morning

on one of our annual visits south

wondering, perhaps, whether

any of us noticed

your apparent transformation

from last year’s

beagle collie mix

to some kind of variation

on shepherd mastiff terrier
another Mandarin 
of the Ring Dynasty. 

*Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Welcome, sincerely

Welcome To Walgreen’s

It’s still early when I stop in

for my Friday New York Times.

Still, so very still

up well lit slot canyons

carved deep into strata

of Pain Relief and Laxatives

Ointments and thirty-packs

of Bud Light, Seasonal animatronics

enough to support an insanity plea.

One old woman, held in tableau

clutching a purse to the placket

of her fluted black coat

radiates a faith

worthy of your vilest penitent  

before a Covenant Ark

of anti-inflammatories

Still Crazy After All These Years

piped in to set a mood.

Still, you found the time

for the warmest of greetings

as I walked in, not

the stillborn kind

you’d expect at your CVS

or your Costco

bestowing same on one and all

even the busy, babbling

Bluetooth man.

But be still

my heart at checkout

as if a heartfelt welcome

was somehow insufficient

in these spiritually bereft times.

Did I find everything I was looking for?

You bet I did indeed and more. 

The back handed kind

Apology

Remember the time

in seventh grade

I told you to go take

a flying fuck

at a rolling purple donut?

You may well have had it coming

Buster, blood red teeth of a stiletto

comb sheathed in your hip pocket

Tapering to menace

a shoulder blade

Your practiced sneer

I think in pictures like Temple Grandin

a curse and a gift I’ve managed

to keep under my hat

Fresh from the fat of the deep

fryer, the one from Homer Price

caroming down the street

Nauseatingly sweet, steel

belted radial, purple as prose

violet as a vase of asters

Wobbly as bad rhyme

easily outpacing the intervening

fifty-odd years

All of it now, at our age, a leap of faith

timing a victim of creaking

joints and crusty synapses

Besides, I said it purely for pleasure

Words exquisitely paired, rolling off my tongue

ahead of such a satisfying heartbeat of syllables

that even you would be able to appreciate.