______

Mowing the Back Yard  

The bird I love the most for its eight-note call
flew around me with my lousy noisy mower.
I had done a cruel thing, by accident as usual
by not mowing my backyard four weeks
into summer. Even the Kentucky Blue was
chest high and seeded out. So much the yard
looked wild, even the mourning dove was fooled
into thinking it might be safe, and made her nest
somewhere by the sedum and the goldenrod.
Out the window Debbie saw her swoop, she was washing
dishes and looked out. I thought at first she
chased a moth—I thought I saw her catch it.
She sat ten feet up on a wire to scold me
or to watch in what must have been to her
shattering agony—while I mowed around
and came back. Like a monster in a nightmare.
Again she swooped around me
when I neared the overgrown mound we’d tried
to make a raised bed but failed, where one
bleeding heart struggles on amongst the tangle
of grass. I cut the engine. I looked for eggs
but found none. Left the grass,
and put the mower in the shed.

______

My Father and My Mother Come to Visit

This was before they learned
it was better to get a motel.
Makes it easier on everyone.
But then we’d go to get them
at the motel and find my mother
sitting on the bed as though
they’d just had a scene.
In her hat and coat
ready to go, and dad
still in the bathroom,
in his underwear,
with shaving cream
in little flecks beneath
his ears, or maybe
a tiny square of toilet paper
on his chin with a red spot
soaked through.
They didn’t come to visit often,
dad hated to travel.
But I remember them sleeping
in our bed. Debbie and I
going in and out
of the bedroom, trying
to be quiet and get ready
for work while they slept.
Them not a whole lot older
than I am right now.
Mom up to use the bathroom
dad there in bed
in the fetal position. 

I don’t know what I felt
seeing my dad there sleeping
curled up like a child.
He seemed so small.
It took my breath away
from me for a moment.
He still had almost 20 years to live
but neither of us knew that.
We’d never really been friends.
He didn’t know how
to treat a young son
and now it seemed
I was suddenly older
not jus t older with self knowledge
but older than my own pop.
What are you supposed to think
when your life rotates
a hundred and eighty degrees
when you look in
on your sleeping father?

______

Driving down the highway this afternoon on my job

For some reason a sense of happiness and well-being came over me
like I was taking some antidepressants and they just kicked in
after three or four months waiting. I didn’t know what to do with
the feeling—after all, I’m used to thinking about death
read the obits in the local news first thing on the job
each day, to see if any of my clients bit the dust,
then I go out and visit these fragile old ladies
and angry old men. Lots of them look like skeletons
with skin draped over the bones, but they’re hanging on—
even so, that’s what I see and think about each day—
many of them slapped silly by some disease, shocked
as cattle in the chute, but hanging on. So I’m driving out
to see this tiny old woman who sits in a chair all day
to sleep at the dining room table, and this other one
addicted to her pain medications I haven’t met before
and the sun is up and in my face like the fact
of life and the fact of death and the fact of the slow
decline out of life we most of us take. Most of us
aren’t lucky enough to get hit by lightning or a meteorite,
most of us are going to go through that slow slippage
from the peak of our powers, like a guy trapped on
a gravel cliff, grasping at pebbles and grass tufts
and I’m thinking about this kind of stuff driving
suddenly happy, suddenly healthy and well
as if I were fifteen again when I knew I would
never die, or if I did die, it would be a hero’s death
and there would be music playing and somehow
the story of me would live on somewhere
I wasn’t exactly sure where, but somewhere,
and now I’m telling myself “God damn I feel good
driving down this highway. God damn!”

______