yesterday
cold rain drizzled everything
like cold rain
smothered the edges
spring-budding trees
traffic-drenched walkers
lensed windows into
multifaceted eyes
muddied the sun
today
sun’s yellow pen
redraws all edges
illuminates
spring-budding trees
spring-stepping walkers
banishes windows
brings in birdsong’s
bright giggling blues
The old guy whittles a stick.
Wielding a knife that sharp
with that sloppy skill
he should cut himself
slice a chunk out
but he doesn’t.
It’s going to be either
a snake head
or a duck — but I won’t speculate.
Not if I want to hang around
and catch shavings of wisdom that
peel off like layers of skin
or ears or spare fingers
or pieces of stick for that matter.
I want to ask him
and I wish I knew the question
but he knows the answer
if he can remember.
He peers at the slowly molting wood
through spectacles almost as cloudy
as my perception of him.
How can he see what he does?
How can I see him,
separated as we are
by his stubborn silence
and my stubborn need
to whittle away?
Splish-splash
So the guy is taking a piss
in my newly refinished john
all I can think of is his
mist of piss splishing and
spraying
not intentionally
but his method of dispersal
does spray the yellow miasma around
in this case
on those most pristine
newly grouted floor tiles
and it occurs to me
—a guy who has pissed standing
ever since my mother taught me to—
that we males spew a lot of
urine staking territory
and
that our women
who squat and dribble discretely
live with creatures who
stand astride and spray
now here is where it gets weirder
Swift fans will recall that
Gulliver was revolted by the
raunchy bodies of the giant females
in Brobdignag who used him
more intimately than
currently defined in
our criminal code.
Also not in our criminal code
our male propensity
to spray seems Brobdignagian
or maybe skunkish
and my modest proposal is
that our women
should
like Gulliver
revolt