Portable
Concrete Mixer
I
don’t think I’ll ever be dumb enough to go to work everyday.
What
life is better? Tying boot laces at 5 a.m. and sipping
Squalid
truck stop coffee, or this pond life, playing on the wet bank
With
mason jars full of tadpoles fat as Buddhas?
The
frogs are right--rest in the sun or jump and hide until
All
danger passes.
Father calls and I quit
my squat,
Running
to him because I’m not a frog, but a boy.
He’s
behind the arborvitae hedge where something’s missing--
The
portable concrete mixer used to stand just there,
Sagging
on leaf springs, hitch propped on a stack
of
wooden blocks, grass that had grown tall underneath it
Yellow
as frog thighs, wheel ruts deep and empty and leading
Across
the backyard to the gravel driveway, hidden from view.
What did you do with my
stuff, I asked.
The
treasures I collected and hid in there? Yeah, alla them
Sticks
and shit you stacked up in the engine housing?
I
threw it on the burn pile and tossed the rocks in the fire ring.
Uncle
Dick sold the engine for a song and scrapped the mixer,
You
gotta help me hitch ‘er up and haul ‘er over to his house.
Now stop acting like a
little kid, we got work to do.
And we did.
