Patchwork Prose and Verse
when the world
takes on its murky
hue and the heaviness
of the anchor spirals
downward making it
hard to keep my head
above water I wonder
about my age
and whether I’ve
depleted all the
happy chemicals
or whether I
just need to
eat a banana
approaching the
edge of grief
alongside a friend
and the blur of the
numbing steals all
sense of time
and place and memory
of sequence of order
of hunger and thirst
of exhaustion in the
energy of fumes
we’d just returned
from lunch Tuesday
when her call came.
I’d missed it, called her
back to learn her
husband had fallen
from his chair at
work and she was
hospital bound.
I let our boss know.
A friend and I
arrived to a
room full of people
we did not know.
And just like that,
a lunch special
slice of pizza and
salad with lemon
water later, the
world is changed
forevermore
just hours
before she
broke down
in the waiting
room with the
declaration
we weren’t finished.
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.
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
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?
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
Day 6
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing ~
our Boo
forced a threatening
brown bull to retreat
to turn tail
and
take to the woods
or was that his intention?
was he a charger of bulls
or was he a shepherd
of cows?
was he herding them
back in their farm direction
because he knew they
were lost, drifters one
farm south of theirs,
needing a nudge?
this is, after all
the Funny Farm,
where you have
to be a little
sideways to end
up here in the
land of the
unexpected
where wrinkles in
perceptions become
realities like this:
Boo Radley is a
shepherding schnoodle
of lost herds, the
meanest bulls not
excluded, because
he knows how it feels
to be lost, looking
for home, aggressively
persuading them not
to give up a good thing
all this brings back
the day we were
on the beach
late afternoon
on a cloudy day
sipping wine
on a blanket
when two women
much further into
their bottle
walked by us too close
to our beach campout
according to Boo
Boo corrected
them
~not politely~
and in their swagger,
in their smirks,
their chuckles,
one taunted back:
oh, what a little badass!
fast forward
the years
to today and I
want to go back
to that moment
and say
yes ma’am,
he certainly is!
he fulfilled the
prophesy at the bottom
of your
wine bottle
you saw the future
of our little rescue
Schnoodle named
Boo Radley~
a champion badass
herder of bulls
you weren’t bullshitting
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
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
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
dropped its head
ready to charge
I felt surely in my
soul I was about to
witness Boo
being trampled
and killed
because
though he is small
he is tenacious
ten times the size
of that monstrous bull
in his inflated mind
Common Threads 