OLD DOGS

sticky sweet
bubble gum caramel
the way my love smiles
because the sun adores her,
waves murmur & every
tiny bird rides the wake
of her passing.
Old fools are the best kind
because they have money.
No grace, no real chance
to last past the summer.
Oh, you’re funny.
Buy me a little something.
I’ll sit by your lawn chair &
laugh at the jokes
we’ve all heard before.
Waves arrive with a sigh.
Crabs scuttle from safer
places out onto the sand
waving tiny, ineffective claws
at dogs, humans and fate’s
careless peck.

FROZEN TIME WITH HONDA

Sirens on the highway keening
then coughing
something likely awful for someone
has happened again.
It woke me from a Sunday nap &
for some unfathomable reason
I woke thinking of a winter
when a southern friend
drove her car up from Georgia
& when she parked it,
coming into our apartment to stay overnight
the car froze up.
It had water in the engine
which became ice.
It had oil in the engine
which became glue.
Even the transmission gelled.
“How cold was it?”
Ten or fifteen below, I recall,
nothing newsworthy or unexpected.
Wisconsin winter.
They towed the car to a garage to thaw.
She stayed for a week.
I mention this because, five days in,
she drank a bottle of wine
with my new wife & confessed that
she had been lying in our bathtub
ears deep, feet up
legs in a careful vee
to let the faucet jet onto her clitoris.
It worked wonders.
My wife whispered this to me that night
in our bed, my ears still ringing
from the shipyard
maybe she got a little drunk.
It made me look more closely
at our visitor, a plump blond
who deserved a better haircut.
I think of her now & of course
my estranged wife & yes,
that pitted chrome faucet.
How I could never again take a shower
without looking at it with wonder,
maybe some envy & wish it could share its secrets.
Never did.
Nor, until this poem, did I.
When our guest got her car back
she left that day, swearing not to stop
until she got south of Chicago.
That was so long ago she sent us a postcard
to let us know she got home.
I never saw her again.
Maybe my wife did, I don’t know &
can’t ask now. Like the drum
of water into a tub or the sound
of Sunday traffic brought to halt.
Listen. Roll over &
try to get back to sleep.

Photo by Nichika Yoshida on Unsplash.