11.
Child is up at 1 AM wandering
hobbling over the carpeted living
room floor, laundry spins
in the other room - preparations
for Monday - somehow get the
week started right.
Pop the bone into its
socket,
grease the tired wheels.
I can barely keep my eyes open.
Soft cumulus puff comfort bath
and all that darkness out the bathroom
window.
Clean blankets to steal the chill off
Ash’s trembling shoulders as she’s
come down with a brain scrape
fever.
My son Jesse keeps making a
bee-line for the aloe-vera plants
those long thick pulpy appendages
with cacti-like needles at the edges
enough for a learned child to be
wary.
Nevertheless - my son charges over
there and he’s starting to wine,
grows tired, walks back and forth,
back and forth, and one of his toys
(the play toilet) in the other room goes off suspiciously,
probably needs batteries.
Perhaps some ghost kid
took a shit in there just
now.
Freakish sad things are toys when
left unplayed, still-life, untouched,
Nutcracker suite logics. Toy soldier
marching in holly-ivy delirium some
white out Christmas, dull bone
haze of cold outside, sweltering
fires roar within.
My son has got to be ready for bed soon.
Still, I need absolute proof of it.
I don’t think I recall my 18th month
albeit had to be similar to
Jesse’s at least I hope so with
all the rumbling tumbling around he
does.
Outside this ramshackle house’s
picture window is Cuming Street
traffic flashing and roaring past.
And beyond that, large swathes
of prairie and geometric farm fields
like puzzles fitting together snugly
yet hardly a small town to save
anyone’s ass from wandering around
for hours through roll along hills until
your face feels chapped with
road dust, wind and sunlight -
skin as stiff as a pastor’s starched white
shirt.
(August 17th, 2014)
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