MEMORY IS A LAME DOG LAGGING
• Stakes
The storm cracks the midnight valley
flashing wounds, opulent-silver gashes
bleeding sky
My feet on the gel of the cliff,
metal stakes and rope in my pockets
How the family, amazingly, sleeps
while the tent bows, flirts, teases,
its cheeks round with wind—a stringless
kite about to take off
How the hunter storm ferreted me
from sleep
and flamboyantly I grip
the rope and stakes
• The where
In the sluggish half-hour
when bathing suits dry,
when mothers stuff net bags with plastic toys
fold towels and lawnchairs
match flipflops to feet—
wavering on the blue municipal pool
floor
I see it first, the answer
to her where!
• Veer
From the front porch
the red-and-white bike is a monstrous
pinwheel
spinning, the clothespinned cards
whipping from the spokes
all of it catapulted
all of him, yellow t-shirt, gray shorts, green hat
over the hood of a car
• His
Richie's long scar
across his Popeye bowling-ball upper arm
Blue coverall sleeves pushed up
he showed me, shyly
• Lame Dog
Tripod! lifts his head
Three spotted paws
light as dancing light on the rock-rim dirt lane
Boys wrap against a summer wind,
warm hand-me-downs but bare feet, bare heads,
scraped knees
On this eastern bluff, waves snap into mist
The friends race along the shelf
and there's Tripod lagging along
taking his dogear time
• I've heard
Never turn your back on an ocean and never
face into a wave
which leaves you forever spinning
• Veer
No words from my mother's lips for months
after the boy next door, the one
who first in line at the Good Humor truck
always got the last fudgsicle,
veered his handlebars,
black and white streamers, ring-a-ding bell
into the out-of-town car
• Stakes
Heart, my heart
first at the smell then at the sight of a fresh scat
mound on the fever-blazened tundra
Earlier a cub lame and bleeding
left alone
• The where
At least, someone whispers,
she'll have the other
A one of two, a twin
blue as the cement pool floor and centered
on a lane stripe,
round as an unfulfilled whole note
• His
Richie, to escape
a suddenly toppling mass of vertical
half-inch sheets of cold-rolled steel
had held out his arm,
palm perpendicular like a cartoon white-gloved traffic cop
or a talk-to-the-hand teen
until the furious muscle burst the crepe of skin—
he and his biceps
that strong
• Lame Dog
Look at Tripod,
lone front paw digging a mighty
hole to China, digging digging
and why not?
Maybe he's found
the reason
O Tripod!
Dig for us, dig!
Published in Beloit Poetry Journal