Monday, April 16, 2018

THIS LIFE ~








This Life






It’s just a rolled up candy wrapper or two or three. Gold foil ball. Since we eat little candy, when we do we play a game passing the rolled up foil back and forth to one another. Often as a playful hindrance. Down the front of her blouse. Down the back of my shirt. Under her bedroom pillow. In my boot. On her jar of yogurt in the refrigerator. In my cereal bowl. It won’t give up for days and days, and sometimes some weeks, until one or both of us forgets where we left the ball, and either the other didn’t find it or suddenly had to get back busy with real life. That damn real life. So what should we call this life?





In The Land Of Slush






They have been together and in love so long now

That when they think of an earlier life apart, it

Isn’t possible. Or it seems another life entirely.

After all it was childhood only before they met.

Somewhere within the love a child was born,

Came into his own, left. They returned to what

They had before the child was born as if wooded

Branches closed in together like wings of a large bird.

When he told her she was beautiful during a quiet

Meal, it was as if she had never heard the word before

Even though he brought it to her in every imaginable

Way each day. Walking together in a land of slush at

The end of winter in a  bleak town meant very little

When there is beauty. It could vanish in an instance

So don’t be bothered with those who hate you for it.

In that same instance others would grab it, gladly, and

You would be looking in. She carried a heavy package,

The rain was new spring but cold as snow, you held

The umbrella for her as you both walked, & talked.





Pal Goose






On that sunny day

I opened your pen door

And let you out —

You loved the sun

Sun on snow

Making tracks to the pond —

Because it got too busy

But I have no excuse how

I forgot to close your

Pen door and left home



Sometime in the evening

Faraway, thoughts to you and

The open door but I would get back

The moon was out, and you

Loved the moon —

The raccoon was out, and he

Hunts by the moon —

The next morning you were

Found dead with eyes open

Suddenly flat and huge on the snow



Too big for raccoon to even bother with

Whose blood-tracks tricky designed away

And then as if he noticed how obvious

Seemed to wash his murderous paws

Off in the snow and vanished



You were our third gander

In twenty years, flocks of

Geese once upon a time mixed

With ducks and chickens and when

Our rooster died you were the new

Rooster for the chickens —

It looked funny, it looked

Practical, you fit



I miss you now when I split

Wood and wait to hear your call

Loud and sudden and part of me




———————————
BOB ARNOLD
I'm In Love With You
Who Is In Love With Me
Longhouse 2012