Lily’s small hand fits like a spatula

 

Lily’s small hand fits like a spatula

inside the peanut butter jar
scraping corners that hide the best stuff.
All the rainy ride to preschool in deep
depressing December she licks fingers.
    “Goombye”
A peanut butter kiss.

Today’s job an auto body shop
replacing fluorescent ballasts.
Amid clanking wup-wup-wupping
I overhear one guy say on the phone:
    “You mean he’s dead?
    Actually dead?
    Did the kids see?”
Neighbor hung himself in the back yard.
Had children, a family. Jesus!
So at lunch break we talk about why
and about another guy who went out drinking
with 5 friends and shot himself in a bar.
Splat. And we wonder when dead
do you care what people think?
    Yes, I say. You care.

I pick up Lily. Burritos to eat in the truck
driving home in the spicy-stuffy cab.
Today she took a field trip, got to ride
an alligator (she calls it) to the second floor,
got to push the button.

Next morning the rain has ended.
A new jar 100% peanut all natural, no sugar.
A spoon, she licks. That man, not here.

……

First published in Rat’s Ass Review —thank you Roderick Bates, editor
Photo: my rarely clean truck. I must’ve just washed it.

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Newsboy

 

Newsboy

Carlos tosses my Mercury News
from the window of one bangedy car
after another with dead-eye aim
to my brick step year after year.

At Christmas I tip him.
Started with a twenty, now it’s a fifty
which come to think of it
follows his age.

I delivered the Washington Star
from a Radio Flyer wagon.
Saved up to buy a hatchet and a knife
with a sheaf I could wear on a belt.

I went to high school, college.
Wrote books, worked construction,
raised a family, lost the knife,
still have the hatchet.

Newspapers dying everywhere
but here comes Carlos with the sunrise.
You can hear that holey muffler
and when he’s gone, here’s what’s new
in the lingering smell
of blue exhaust.

…..

First published in Red Eft—thank you editor Corey Cook

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Pocket Pie

 

Pocket Pie

The boy clambers
out of mother’s arms
—nothing can stop him—
into my brand new
fresh in the driveway pickup,
seizes the steering wheel
and shouts FWUCK!
so we go for a spin.
Stop at mini-mart.
He points, asks, “Wha?”
I answer: “A pie that fits in your pocket.
Want one?”
Of course. Back home, parked,
we stay in the fwuck.
He turns the radio knob,
chooses rock. Classic rock.
I drink a beer. He bites crust, apple goo.
Saturday afternoon, April,
sweet as pie.

…..

First published in Your Daily Poem
Note: The photo was taken the day I drove home in my brand new pickup truck. My son adored trucks, would point them out shouting “Fwuck! Fwuck!” causing odd glances from passersby. 

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Easter with Bunny Blue

 

Easter with Bunny Blue

A blue-gray rabbit 
stirs in her cedar chip cage 
as dawn pours 
through the big window
onto the shaggy rug 
(I should vacuum)
where my son 
new to a world 
outside womb 
lies kicking
as he kicked 
while within, 
we each on our backs 
on soft wool rug
waving hands and feet 
in the sunbeam air
while mama sleeps. 

Do I mimic him
or he me? We kick, wave, smile 
while Quinn the German shepherd 
sits in birdsong outside 
keeping guard of baby, 
of sleeping mama, of Bunny Blue 
maintaining our only shred of dignity
(I should vacuum)
this simple silly 
leg-waving morning
when life is newborn.

…..

First published in Storyteller Poetry Review. Thank you editor Sharon Waller Knutson.

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Uncle teaches how to drive on ice

 

Uncle teaches how to drive on ice

Like falling in love, Uncle says,
and laughs. Steer into the skid,
not away. Feather touch on the wheel.
Bridge freezes first but—Sammy frowns—
one time approaching the Snake River span
hidden ice not playing nice
sent his old pickup skating
so he steered into the slide, pumped the brakes
and stopped plumb at the canyon’s edge.

Not far behind him
an AmeriGas delivery truck.

Even in a blizzard you can foresee events,
headlights through a veil of swirling flakes
so he bails from the old Ford face-first
into a snowbank just before a 16 ton tank
of liquified petroleum gas
like a giant hockey puck
plows through the pickup
down toward the Snake.

The cab submerges. Bubbles.

Soft the silence,
snow falling in sheets

and a woman appears
clawing up the embankment
spitting curses
ejected halfway down
fractured arm but she can climb.

She’s a blue-black ponytail,
a white parka, red blood dripping,
she’s an eagle with broken wing.

Says she’s gonna sue somebody’s ass
sure as her name is Sacagawea Jones and then
go home to Louisiana where it’s warm
and purchase land down there.

Aunt Sac. Why her crooked arm.
Already on the black ice
Uncle Sammy’s in love.

…..

First published in The Ekphrastic Review.
The image is a painting called “Winter Chaos” by Marsden Hartley to which I’ve added an eagle. The poem is a true story which I’ve improved as everyone does to history, especially the history of the American West.

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Daybreak, Drought

 

Daybreak, Drought

Sun rises in a dry sky,
we walk a dirt road,
the dog and I.
Rounding a bend
little Mickey halts,
one paw lifted.

Three deer—a buck, a doe, a fawn—
senses ablaze with the twitch of ear,
quiver of nose, blink of eye
take our measure.

The buck has a handsome rack
but I can see ribs, count the bones.
I once saw a doe maul a dog,
cracking the skull with her forelegs
to protect a fawn. Mickey
with uncommon good judgment
stays frozen by my ankle.

A moment, mild,
of silent negotiation,
the domestic and the wild.
With such hunger the fawn
might eat from my hand—
before the buck spears me.

The doe breaks first,
up a hillside so vertical
her hooves can’t hold.
She slides back,
then on a switchback leaps again
followed quickly by the fawn
as the buck remains,
impassive and supreme,
gentleman and protector,
what you wish in your own father, frankly,
and then he follows
with that head-bobbing walk
balancing antlers
into the parched brush
holding our gaze
until vanished.

…..

From my book Foggy Dog
First published in Plum Tree Tavern—thank you editor Russel Streur
Photo by Andy Choinski

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The new stove speaks only Serbian

 

The new stove speaks only Serbian

but who cares? The old stove
spoke no warnings because
back when we built this cabin
if we didn’t know about touching
hot metal, we found out.

Instead of potbelly, this one’s a cube
with black iron doors, gray steel sides,
ugly. Practical. Price was right.
Like this cabin built of salvaged
lumber and discarded doors.

Like our child, conceived at no cost
right next to old potbelly without
instructions or safety warnings.
He loved that stove but grown and gone
to another continent, another language.

Frost this night as we arrive late.
In the gray steel box behind black iron doors
sits a tipi of kindling over crumpled old news.
One match and it flames like hunger,
the kindling crackles, the little logs catch
and the stove makes popping sounds
which is Serbian for Welcome hello get warm.

The bed is like an ice-plunge
so we pile up quilts, spark our own heat.
At dawn the old cabin clicks and creaks
as if stretching bones in the morning sun
while the stove softly murmurs 
which in any language is how you say
Build another tipi before you go,
I'll be ready when you come back.

…..

First published in Autumn Sky Poetry
Painting by Susan MacMurdy

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The last father, the last mother,

 

The last father, the last mother,

the last little girl toddle to their old sedan
leaving me alone on this beach
beyond sunset—

Oops, not alone.
A single seagull at my feet. She tries
wobbling to stand—on only one leg.
Flops into wet sand beak-first
like a nail into a board.
Stuck. She’ll asphyxiate.

No. Awkwardly she struggles, flops,
frees her beak and hops one-legged,
washed by creeping edges of surf
which the ocean deals, and deals again.

How did she lose one leg?
It must hurt. Is bird pain like human pain?

Could I capture? Take her home?
Google how to rehab seagulls?
Make crutches?
Do I want a bird in my house
squawking at my dog, pooping
on my bookshelves, flapping in my kitchen?

Post-sunset the sky is a trout-blend of color.
A cold wind, salt smearing eyeglasses.
Smelly rotting kelp washed by a
rogue wave, icy water to my ankles.

And the seagull —suddenly gone.
Where did she go?
I’m surrounded by carcasses of crabs,
mounds of mussel shells, sand dollar saucers.
Surrounded by death which the ocean deals,
and deals again. Where did she go?

…..

First published in Plum Tree Tavern
photo by analogicus on Pixabay

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This is a poem about a full moon

 

This is a poem about a full moon

which I never saw rising
because I live in a valley
covered by fog.

Night by night just before bed
I soak in a hot tub and listen to owls.
Night by night, a different phase of moon
must rise high scaling mountainside
and then pierce the fog
which keeps the redwoods alive.

The fog is a dance of silver shafts
hovering among branches
like beams from a celestial projector.

This is a poem about a nose
touching my elbow at the edge of the hot tub,
a black wet nose,
a raccoon cub wide-eyed with life,
fur thick and glossy,
curious, electric, spirit of night.

Startled delighted I exclaim There you are!
like an idiot and the cub, scared,
scampers — gone.

This is a poem about the felt,
sometimes seen, ever there:
the fog and full moon,
an elbow, cub nose,
the damp touch
of the wild cosmos.

…..

First published in Plum Tree Tavern

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Ghost dogs

 

Ghost dogs

Ghosts of every dog
who ever owned you
fetch you from your bed
to lead you unleashed
through moonless forest.

Ghost dogs pause
to study scat of bobcat,
blossom of possum,
suit of love-struck newt.
Four-footed cannonballs
boom through brush
chasing a rabbit
who always escapes
and dogs ask with shiny eyes
Why won’t you help?

Senses enhanced to canine pitch
you hear footsteps of spiders on the hunt
snores of squirrels cuddled in nests
heartbeat of snake
spooky silence of owl
as pant-pant-panting
tongue flap-flap-flapping
you gallop with spirits
who can smell your fatigue.

Yes they will guide you home,
they will replenish your water,
they pour kibbles of comfort,
a bowl for your soul.
Unseen they will curl on your bed.
Unconditional, they love you still.

…..

First published in The Wild Word
photo by Martin Tajmr

I woke from a dream that all my old dogs had come for me. At first I thought I must be dead. But it was a reunion of spirits. There are joys that we feel down to our bones. Such a blessing when they return, if only in dreams.

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