Mud Work

A wild tom watches us from the top

of the wooden fence, a ruff of hair around

his neck like James Dean with his leather

collar turned up, looking like he wants

to cut me but settling for the disrespect

of an extended yawn. It’s a sloppy

morning, early March, mud bubbling up

around the last patches of snow, and I

suspect the cat took to the fence line

to keep his feet dry. My granddaughter

and I, however, have work to do

in the mud, and cannot afford such

squeamishness. Bill Nye, the guinea pig,

after a fitful night during which we sat

vigil, gave up the ghost just before dawn,

lay in state, briefly, during breakfast,

in his sock-lined Crocs box, and now young

Clara looks for the perfect spot

in which to plant his remains. She hasn’t

discussed her views on heaven, with me,

and does not request that prayers

be prayed over his white-and-tan form,

nor over the final resting place she chooses

under the birch tree where we have often

watched brilliant goldfinches and nuthatches

hanging upside down from its branches,

and where now we root in the dark soil

at its base. My eye on the cat hunched

on the fencepost like a raven, I tell her

we will need to dig deeply if we hope

to keep good Bill from a premature

great gettin’ up morning, and she sets

to the work like a fervent acolyte, or

like a kid up to her elbows in mud.

(from MockingHeart Review, 2017)

Screw Your Courage

King: Indeed, I’m nothing if not brave.
Fool: In truth thou speaketh, nothing.
King: I am of two minds about that comma.
Fool: Pray, pay it, sirrah, as is your custom, no mind.

                                                            —The Fall of Fresno

It goes without saying that when we hear

the bomb blast, I will not be running towards

it with the heroes. Nor will I step in front

of you to take a bullet. Sorry. And in a thousand

smaller ways, I have long ago proven the true

measure of this man. As you well know,

I will leave one milliliter of milk in the carton,

so as not to be the one tasked with throwing it

out. I will snore a little louder when we both

hear the dog whining to be let out too early

in the morning. When we are watching

your favorite show about the bachelor who

test-drives a showroom full of well-equipped

women, you never hear the caustic dialogue

running through my head, only the occasional,

passive-aggressive, “I’ll bet she would go

to the kitchen and get him a beer.” It goes

without saying that the kids come to me

with their requests for later curfews and greater

allowances, knowing I will fold like a cheap suit.

So when I tell you I wish I could take your place

in that hospital bed, tubes snaking in and out

of you, wish it could be you telling me the lame

joke about Death going into a bar and the bartender

says, “what’ll you have?” and Death says, “the guy

on the third barstool”—we both know it has nothing

to do with self-sacrifice or a greater tolerance

for pain, and everything to do with going first,

with not being the one left holding the bag

of all the days to come, left to die a thousand times.

(from MockingHeart Review, 2017)

As Observed from a Stationary Picnic Table

Julia asked me why I didn’t come there anymore

to eat my lunch on the picnic table beside the statue

of Albert Einstein, each wild hair on his head

a masterpiece in marble, though clearly I was there

now—or then. Was it, she asked, that I felt lesser

than, in his presence, me eating a tuna salad

sandwich before going back to my job delivering

boxed wine to high-rise shut-ins on my bicycle,

while Al had been captured in stone juggling

the solar system between his hands? No, I said,

I think he would’ve been happy to sit here with me

and share a sandwich and slip a straw into a box

of Californian rosé meant for Eunice Carver

of 94D Park Place, and I think we would have talked

about the violin which I also played when I

was young and the way the Yankees have tanked

again, and I would have gently explained to him

that whistling at the women walking by us

on the street isn’t done anymore. Fair enough,

he might have said, but I am still doing it in my head—

that’s still okay, I hope, imagining a universe in my head

where just one time Marilyn Monroe responds

to my catcall and comes over to run her fingers

through my hair? I said that I hoped so, too,

and told him how sometimes when I was weaving

my bike through traffic I imagined myself chasing

a beam of light while pedaling at the speed of light,

no longer content to stand on the platform or sit

at a picnic table (this to Julia, who said she had a straw,

if that’s what it took) but standing at the front of the train

with my head out the window where the light would strike first.

(first published in Poetry Northwest, 2017)