Our Roots
For Mother’s Day, we promised
her something special.
She said no. Just let me take you
to your roots. Take you to see
the land that arranged you and me.
She filled us with tire swings. We
danced with corpses that never made
good relatives. We climbed past the tracks
that took our teenaged grandmother
to her long dead husband.
There was a store that held a loft
full of good stories. There was a
yard with a rope that broke
Jimmy’s arm. There was a
home that my mother adored.
Your roots, she whispered into a storm
running through the empty field, these are them.
**
Muddied Bottoms
She came back to the lake.
Wanting the silence of slapping tides
against hulls. The wet decay
of hollow timber. Abandoned string.
Mallards lulling past with no wake
left behind.
Mud once oozed over toes
without ever fearing the rusted
jabs of careless lures.
Children lapped it in and spat it
out through gaps between teeth.
Water wasn’t dirty then.
But memories never really dance
on the bottom. They slap the rocks
and they rest in shadows that
swallow reflections.
**
Wet Chickens
My mother always told me not to
put my ass on my shoulders.
I didn’t listen, I just
tramped around the kitchen,
kickin’ our old dog and smashin’
her old dishes. She’d just stare at chickens
in the rain. And I’d just go on and complain.
One time I made a run for it.
Got a good fifty feet out before
the mud listened to mamma
and sent my ass flyin’ into the air
until the ground gave me
a good old kick in the head.
She still laughs at chickens in the rain.
