paper in my pocket

paper in my pocket
making note
preparation for doing
like setting the table

dad did it.
inadvertently, he taught me,
jot thoughts down
afore they get away.

time ticks quicker

notice what’s going on?
mowed the lawn two days in a row.
usually it’s right to wait a week.
we're moving in quick time.

tell someone please
turn down the gas
on the time machine,
obviously it’s running too fast.

many flowers blew into bloom
within a pair a days.
now don't be thinking this is paradise,
life is more like a rolling pair of dice.

blowin' across the highway

political division of the sexes
an obstacle in long standing tradition
the world may someday surmount
or complacently continue to avoid.

like a garbage can
blowing across a highway,
you better stay alert.
try not to cross paths.

continue to not think about it,
most times you may be lucky,
or do right and change your ways
before one has your number.

teeth is all

brush my teeth is all
she asked me what i was doin’
teeth is all i'm doin’
teeth is all

then seven-thirty and we were driving.
she wanted to pick blue berries early
before it got 90 plus humid degrees.
many, many, a record many pickers had the same idea.

through a heavily wooded area on the way,
the guard rail ahead at the crossing came down.
oh no, a train, i moaned, then zip - like that
a locomotive and one train car flashed by.

forty feet ahead of us a buck deer crossed the road
from woods on one side to woods on the other.
two small young deer came out undecided on the road.
we waited 'til the adult female rushed them across to the woods.

at another bend in the road
was a large wild turkey in the brush.
right at the side of the road's where he sat.
a big guy, geeze he was fat.

back home after berries, a blue jay had hit our kitchen widow.
looked open, too clean? don't think so, more than likely
he was thinking distracted and flying too fast.
was lying dead when we arrived. m. got the shovel, buried it.

and the day began
with m. waiting in the car.
only needed a minute to brush my
teeth is all.

mocking bird hill

came out of a song, the name did.
skipped in on the wind, stuck like discarded paper
beyond the fence where Hoppy lived in a shack
at the town dump, on a knoll above Mud Brook.

he was resident care taker, barroom dart baller,
and sometime crossing guard downtown.
a tiny fellow in second hand clothes, worn seaman’s cap,
one leg way shorter than the other.

we’d examine approachable edges when we went dumpin',
finding some old wood piece, or metal gadget,
antiquated discards, to pick up, cart off,
recycle and transform into inventive service.

a busted end table or a bicycle,
an unbroken bit of colorful depression glass,
an original period lamp in need of rewiring,
a long, long time before anyone spoke of toxins.

today not a trace is left of that place on that knoll,
plowed and replanted clean. the dump's been moved,
gone with Hoppy, as are most of those who remember,
the rise over the creek called Mocking Bird Hill.