Come-bye

I feel compelled, as I leave the coffee shop,

to push chairs in to their tables and straighten

newspapers into neat stacks. Easy enough.

The leaves in the stand of oak trees

in my backyard are raked into a bag almost

as soon as they fall, leaving only clean earth

between trunks. As far as compulsions go,

it seems harmless enough. At night, I sit

on the edge of my bed and tick through each

of my children and grandchildren, holding them

one at a time in my thoughts, thoroughly

scanning each one, combing through their lives

the way I comb though the long hair along

the forearms of my Australian Shepherd

after our walks, looking for stickseed and burs

that need cutting out. The dog puts his nose

through the fences surrounding the pastures

and animal pens we pass as we walk,

and I can see it twitch, see his eyes dart back

and forth as he accounts for each animal,

his legs quivering as the pull of instinct tells him

those sheep should be formed up, those free-

range chickens enjoy entirely too much

freedom, and he looks up at me as if to say,

can’t you see it? just give the order and I’ll

have things ship-shape in no time. And of course

I can see it, understand his need to herd, but these

are not ours, I tell him, and we move on,

ignoring the free-range world flickering

on the periphery, unfollowing Facebook friends,

unsubscribing from newspapers, walking

quickly around human humps and their middens

downtown, working, instead, to organize

the spice rack alphabetically, moving at a good clip

through cast and bring and cross-drive, until cardamom

sheds safely in its place next to cinnamon. 

(originally published in Frontier Poetry, 2017)