I
could sit here
All
day trying to
Draw
a circle
Perfectly
round
But
a bird
Made
one
Into
A
tree
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
Loud
and sudden and part of me
Autobiography
I
stopped thinking
About
my name today
When
in the truck
Returning
home with
My
son after working
Together
at a farm
Splitting
wood,
Picking
kindling
Around
the chopping
Stump,
slinging manure
Onto
the winter garden
And
later hiking
High
into the heather
Pasture,
now in the
Truck
with his gloves
Still
on he sized it
Up
by saying he didn’t
Like
the name Bob — it
Was
too short, only three
Letters
— and it sounded
Like
a name half-city
Half-country
Sunshine
in the garden
along the rows
on her long hair
down her arms
_______________________
Bob Arnold
Once In Vermont
Gnomon
This concludes Once In Vermont, poems by Bob Arnold
published by Gnomon Books from Frankfort, Kentucky
Another book of poems by Bob will be
coming soon
