You, my old companion, I’ve junked three trucks and still I keep you. Buried five dogs. Raised three children who are now raising children. And still I wear you.
You jingle when I walk. Nails clink in pouches. The drill in its holster slaps my leg. The hammer in its clip spanks my butt. You bristle with screwdrivers, chisel, big fat pencil, needle-nose pliers. You call attention. Random kids who have never seen a tool belt before follow me around asking “What are you doing?” Then: “Can I help?”
You smell like me (and I, like you). Leather, fourth decade. I’ve washed your pouches with saddle soap, sewn your seams with dental floss. Now the web of your belt is fraying, wrapped (silly, I know) with duct tape.
Your pockets fill over time. Once in a while I remove every tool, every last screw and nail. I hold you upside down and shake. Sawdust, a dead spider, little strippings of insulated wire will fall out. And once, my missing wedding ring. I had taken it to a jeweler for repair, but when I got there I couldn’t find it. A year later, you coughed it up.
When your webbing finally snaps, when you drop from my waist, maybe it’s you, old tool belt, I’ll take to the jeweler for remounting, for buff and polish. He’ll understand. ……
From my book Random Saints First published in Workers Write! Photo by me. I don’t remember what job I was doing that day or why I had a pouch full of screws along with a 32-ounce framing hammer, an odd combo.
When we lift our arms apples seem to jump to our fingers as if squealing Pick me! Pick me! while we navigate among chickens underfoot and a guard-rooster who glares, who disapproves, who follows our every step.
Bees from a stack of hives hover and buzz about our ears. Sun heats, shade cools, the hose washes apple-skin sugar from the flesh of our hands.
It is not toil it is faith as beneath our feet roots pull nourishment from earth, water glistens from leaf-tip and I cry to the sky Pick me! Pick me! ……
From my book Foggy Dog First published in Roanoke Review Photo by Ralphs_Fotos on Pixabay
my sleep is nuts so on nights off I walk the dog at 3 a.m. hoping a German shepherd normalizes me except Quinn growls at the cop who stays in his cruiser talking through the open window just letting me know somebody called from one of those dark houses but there’s no law against walking at 3 a.m. so have a good night.
Sometimes I jog the golf course under quiet stars. I let Quinn off the leash. Together we run over grass. Even without a canine nose I love the smell, the sound of sleeping snoring chlorophyll.
One night I’m running when the sprinklers start. Immediately before I can think better I pull off my clothes, every stitch. I run. So free! It’s fantastic, the dog agrees until I trip and roll but that’s fantastic too except the bruises and suddenly the spotlight, the cop.
I have mud on my body, grass in my hair. The sprinklers keep chug-chug-chugging in circles splat with cold bullets across my butt as the cop writes out a ticket for an unleashed dog. That’s all, because there’s no law against running through sprinklers on graveyard shift when you’re white. …..
First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you Hayley Mitchell Haugen, editor
We’re driving fast through farmland when a roadside man waves his arms: Slow down! Slow down! A dog, mid-highway. I stop, blocking the road, turn on flashers. Rose leaps out. I join her. We’re dog people.
Rose can’t catch the dog. The man is shouting “Grab her! Grab her!” By size and shape the dog is a shepherd, colored like a beagle, looking friendly as heck but confused and frantic.
I suspect this shep-beagle just wants somebody to tell her what to do, so I crouch and call “Come!” From the center of the highway she runs straight to my outstretched hands. I seize the collar and command “Sit!” She sits.
The man waddles over and takes her by the collar. He’s overweight, bald with a white beard, bad hips. He says, “I know where she belongs.”
Now I check on the cars behind my flashers, engines idling. Drivers waiting. Are they annoyed? Nope. Big smiles. Dog people. …..
From my book Foggy Dog First published in Your Daily Poem. Thank you Jayne Jauden Ferrer, editor Photo by Sajaggg on Pixabay
Quinn is so sorry. When a full-grown German shepherd bites a baby, the dog loses. Quinn knows the rules. His canine tooth ripped a small hole in the baby’s cheek. Now all is confusion as Quinn grovels for forgiveness, baby cries in mother’s arms, mother dabs at the little spot of blood, no big deal.
Baby crawling across the floor touched the food bowl while Quinn was eating. A flash of reflex. Wolf instinct, defend the food. It’s our fault for not watching out.
Baby cries, Quinn whimpers, we explain, guilty parents, guilty dog all needing translators but we know Quinn the protector would die defending that baby and no great harm is done, lesson learned.
Forget the doctor who might report us for bad parenting or bad dogging or — jeez — they might kill Quinn so we treat the babe ourselves and my son, now age thirty-two still has a scar in the cheek. He loves dogs. ……
From my book Foggy Dog First published in MOON magazine—thank you editor Leslee Goodman
Come with me. Here’s the secret trail. Pass the stone foundation of an old homestead. Enter the maple forest, the green oven. Bake, slowly rise like a gingerbread figure. Follow, it’s fine (there’s no witch). Release rivulets of sweat. This is nothing, the foothill.
Listen: the purr, the burble, the rush, the small canyon of Catamount Creek. Remove boots, splash yourself. Splash me. Cup water in hands to pour over the face. Let water dribble inside the shirt, drip to the shorts. Relish the shock of cold against hot parts.
Work uphill now, at last out of the trees into the land of wild blueberry. Pluck, taste tiny nut-like explosions of blue, so intense, so different from store-bought. Gorge, let fingers and tongue turn garish. Fill pockets.
Climb with me now among rocky outcrops like stair steps to the Funnel, a crevice where from below you push my bottom, then from above I pull your hand. Emerge to a view of valley, farmland, wrinkles of mountains like folds of flesh. How far we’ve come. This is the false top.
Catch your breath, embrace the vista, then join me in a scramble up bare granite, farther than you’d think, no trail marked on the endless stone but simply navigate toward the opposite of gravity, upward, to at last a bald dome chilled by blasts of breeze.
At the top, sit with me, our backs against the windbreak of a boulder. Empty your pockets of blueberries. Nibble, share — above the rivers, above the lakes, above the hawks, among the blue chain of peaks beyond your outstretched tired feet. Appreciate your muscles in exhaustion and exhilaration. We have made love to this mountain.
Hear a sound like a sigh from waves of alpine grass in the fading warmth of a lowering sun. Rest. After this, the return is so easy. …..
From my book Random Saints First published by Plum Tree Tavern
Note: There’s a new trailhead to Catamount. No longer secret, and no passing an old homestead. A few more folks on the trail. But it’s the same great hike.
By horse, by canoe they come dressed in grass skirts and beaver pelt hats. They bring amphorae of wine, barrels of ancient beer.
They fight. Belch. Kiss both cheeks. They hug too tight, make ribald jokes. They embarrass you utterly.
They paint flowers on your face and weave sunshine in your hair.
They smoke sacred herbs. Chant, pound on drums, sing in lost language. They puff music in hollowed bamboo, dance in circles, juggle flaming torches. They draw antelope on the walls of your cave.
As dowry they bring generations of struggle, millenniums of sacrifice. They will come to your wedding whether you invite them or not.
Wish them welcome. …..
First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you Hayley Mitchell Haugen, editor
Note: A few years ago I attended a backyard wedding, a humble affair, a small gathering because the bride’s parents and her entire family refused to attend. The groom was the wrong color, the wrong religion. He had worked for me briefly in construction until he realized he’d rather drive a truck. Bride and groom both had nothing in possessions—only love. When I looked into the defiant eyes of the bride taking her vows, I saw the spirits dancing there. In no way could her family boycott this wedding. You could sense them in the air. So I wrote this poem.
Hey, wolf spider on the bathtub bottom scaling porcelain, slipping — uncatchable. I want to shower. You dodge my washcloth, you dart away. You idiot. I’m trying to help. Must I spray you to the drain?
Bare-ass, crouching I pause, resting my fingers on the tub bottom when suddenly you are tickling the hairs on the back of my hand: a greeting, an asking. So I lift. Rapidly I escort you to the kitchen door, set my palm on the porch floor where after rain there is the scent of fungus but you remain, you stand on my knuckles with sensitive feet straddling two prominent veins. You take my pulse.
I lean close, eyeball to eyeballs unblinking. We both are hairy. We frighten women. We mean no harm.
Suddenly shifting your perch you read my palm: heart line, life line, fate. Almost a handshake. My future, would you tell? Then jump, Brother. Peace and farewell! …..
From my book Foggy Dog. First published in Ink Sweat & Tears. Thank you Helen Ivory, editor.
It’s Janice on the phone from her sailboat near Madagascar (background sound of waves slapping hull half a planet distant). Her tenants here on this side of the planet have a stopped-up sink, their own fault says Janice because they live like pigs packing five kids into that two-bedroom cottage but I should fix it which is how I meet freckly smiley Georgia who is discretely nursing a blanketed babe as she leads me to the one and only bathroom where opening the sink cabinet I find giant brown fungi in a pool of slime.
Georgia says Yikes! Baby starts fussing probably about the smell like raccoon turd pudding. I have to scrape out fungus, run a snake through black goo, then straighten the drain which was never installed properly causing the whole problem.
Georgia is stirring soup over a stove, babe in arms like a copper cherub while four kids of laddering ages play kick the can. Tom the father arrives in his old truck, joins the game. Georgia calls to him You done it for today? Tom shouts back I replaced a windshield wiper on Bradley’s car, he don’t know. Georgia explains to me Tom’s a mechanic, performs a secret good deed each day. It’s so simple, she says.
Back to the bathroom, quickly I replace the crappy shower nozzle. I won’t ask. Janice won’t pay. Like pigs we nurture, we bless. …..
From my book Random Saints First published in MOON magazine. Thank you Leslee Goodman, editor Photo by Roy Buri
