poem – Page 61 – Common Threads

June 4, 2024June 3, 2024

Horror Farm

out by the tree line

of Loblolly pines

fifty feet from our

front door

where the Great

Horned Owl pair

chats across the

pine branches

at 5 a.m.

Ollie and Fitz

stopped in their tracks

to smell the rotting leaves.

They looked like charcoal,

only fuzzy. More like a

squirrel tail torn to shreds.

Or a rabbit.

I had just told my children

about rabbit, rabbit earlier

on the first day of June.

Was this a harbinger of

death for this poor

creature gone except

for its fur?

This farm holds mysteries

that will never yield answers.

It’s been the Johnson

Funny Farm since 1971

when three farmhands

saw a trio of cross-eyed pigs

but it’s not all funny here.

Sometimes there is

a twinge of horror against

all the laughter and tears.

June 3, 2024June 3, 2024

Visual Vexations

Visual Vexations

my brother and I

wonder still: were

Mom’s Lewy Body Dementia

confusions visual

distortions or hallucinations?

She saw a little boy in an

orange shirt sitting all alone

at the storefront and worried

about his safety.

We saw a pumpkin.

She saw strange men with

bunches of bananas

under the carport.

We saw family members

building her a wheelchair

ramp with Dewalt power tools.

She heard voices playing

tricks on her. We heard

branches scratching

the shutters in the wind.

Still, we wonder what she

would see now.

Would she know we are

her children, making our

way through this carnival

funhouse with all these

distorting mirrors

of the complex

and the concave,

wondering, too,

what things are?

June 2, 2024June 2, 2024

Rabbit Rabbit

all this rabbit rabbit

of yesterday to have

good luck all month ~

a maddening superstition

bringing more stress about

the forgetting is bad luck

enough to forego the

continuation

to begin to ask why

we do this to ourselves

why rabbit, rabbit?

May 31, 2024May 30, 2024

All This Pain

the closest we

ever got to a

rainbow was a

peacock feather

the day the two

went to Noah’s Ark

to look for things

to discover

to wonder about

I didn’t feel like

that kind of mother

who says a prayer

and leaves it in

the lap of Jesus

without worry

I was more

the warrior type

praying everyday

hoping all the

nickels would add

up to be worth a miracle

I knew in the back

of my mind when I

saw the Cheshire Cat

smile

May 30, 2024

Blue Eyes

they were getting

ready for an afternoon

wedding when the

husband stepped out

of the shower, kissed

his wife, said

I love you, Blue Eyes

laid down on the

bed and died of

a heart attack

leaving her and

their four sons

grieving

this is why when

my husband came

to my bedside

this morning before

stepping into his

shower and kissed

me I wondered:

should I give him

an aspirin?

should I take one?

May 29, 2024May 28, 2024

Puddled Teeth

in the sluice

of a Skytrack

crush and run

puddle a gold

shimmer reveals

a tooth

then another

and before I

wonder about

whose teeth

I imagine the

last food

chewed with

these gold

capped jewels ~

a steak?

a pork chop?

a can of

Beanie-Weenies?

a worker ambled

past pointing

at the carnage

explaining how

the fight broke

out between

two men over

his cousin’s girl

(the cheater)

and though I

did not know

who grew

these teeth

I wondered

about the

places

they’d been

before landing

in the puddled

heap all

sparkly like a

sequined dress

never to be

worn again

May 28, 2024May 28, 2024

Ticks ~ Husband vs. Wife

Wife: Oh, good gracious! A tick!

(gets tweezers, removes tick, flushes it)

7 seconds later finishes

applying makeup, gets dressed and starts

writing before work in her favorite chair

***********

Husband: (hollers from shower)

Can you come here?

I need you to look at something!

Wife: (hollers back) I’m not falling for that again.

Husband: No, seriously.

I think I have a tick.

Wife: I’ll be there when you get out.

Husband: (parading into living room

towel wrapped around his waist,

still half-wet, hair every whichaway,

pointing just under his left nipple)

No wonder I’ve been itching since

we got home from camping!

Wife: Are you sure it’s a tick? It’s

embedded deep. It’s not a mole?

Husband: I don’t think so.

Do you have tweezers?

Wife: Yes, I’ll get them.

(brings them from makeup bag)

Husband: Here, you try! (hands tweezers back)

Wife: (rolling eyes)

Husband: Well, I can’t see that angle

Wife: There’s a mirror right

behind you (digging at embedded

tick, husband wincing)

Husband: Here, let me try

(takes tweezers)

Wait, do you have different

tweezers? These aren’t lining up right.

Wife: (goes and looks for another pair

brings them back 3 minutes later)

Husband: (still digging) I got part of it

Wife: The head is still in there.

Husband: I’ll dig that out later. I’m

going to be late for work…..

(dresses, kisses her, grabs coffee, leaves for work)

Wife returns to chair to finish writing

<writes: Ticks ~ Husband vs. Wife>

May 25, 2024

A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 5

Boo Radley on intake at the rescue organization, so matted they had to shave him down

Day 5:

from the corner

of the house

I could see

the bull’s nostrils flare

I covered my eyes

and peeked through

two fingers

with one eye

our little rescue dog

the Schnoodle we

named Boo Radley

for his timid demeanor

the Schnauzer-Poodle mix

abandoned

in a duplex

by his former family

found by a landlord

matted and starving

thirsting to death

our Boo Radley

with more issues

than a decade of

Saturday Evening Posts

Boo, who trembles

when a cell phone dings

who drops his ears

when we pick him up

who has a nervous

breakdown when he

smells the heat

from the toaster

who sits and stares

down the driveway

when one of us

should be coming home

our Boo Radley

did a most

surprising thing

May 24, 2024May 24, 2024

A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 4

Cows in the herd Boo Radley chased off through the woods

Day 4:

the brown bull

dropped its head

ready to charge

I felt surely in my

soul I was about to

witness Boo Radley

being trampled

and killed

because

though he is small

he is tenacious

ten times the size

of that monstrous bull

in his inflated mind

what happened next

was a viral Tik Tok

never to be seen

except in my own memory reel

Boo Radley

charged the bull

zigzagging

cutting left to right

back and forth

front paws

low to the ground

cussing the bull

for all he was worth

edging up to the bull

its dropped head

meaning nothing to Boo

from the corner

of the house

I could see

its nostrils flare

I covered my eyes

and peeked through

two fingers

May 23, 2024May 23, 2024

A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 3

We have all kinds of animals trying to move in – here, a neighbor before he attempted to halter the leader of these two (it didn’t work)

Day 3:

In farming communities

not a week goes by

that some animal

doesn’t try to make

a break for it and

has to be herded

back to the home pasture

every new day brings

a Facebook Post –

pigs loose on Reidsboro Road

donkey running down Highway 362

goat with a red collar on Hollonville Drive

my favorite was the baby camel

someone reported

running down Concord Road

(the Sheriff’s Department went to

investigate and found it was

Nellie LaBerge’s Lllama)

you never know what you’ll

see in the country

but last week,

Wayne’s entire herd

of cows was loose

in the woods

between our farms

two bulls

among the herd

I was thinking

of lovely handbags

my husband was

thinking of

perfectly rounded cow

patties (dried cow poop)

(this isn’t out of the ordinary ~

just a few weeks ago we’d

had donkeys trying to

move onto the Johnson

Funny Farm

and my sister in law and

I joined in the chase

with other neighbors

to wrangle these two

asses and lead them

back home)

when Boo Radley

saw the herd of cows

eating his grass

the next day

he protected me

and our blades of grass

the black and white

bull turned tail and

ran into the woods

the milk and dark chocolate bull

stood its ground

Boo charged it

that’s when the brown bull