How to Bury a Bone

How to bury a bone –
lessons from Jazzie – wise-woman dog

First, with great fervor, you dig, dig, dig, dig.
When the hole is just right,
drop in your treasure,
surreptitiously,
as if you were merely sniffing around,
not actually dropping in anything of importance.

Then, with your snout, sweep back into the hole
all the earth you have dug out.
Walk away as if nothing important has happened.

When inspiration strikes,
hours, days, or even weeks later,
dig it back up –

savor the transformation.

Yum!

National Mall as Confection – Yum!

 

Like an unexpected gift this day

unwraps in sweet brevity,

February melting like chocolate

visiting on a whim

up from the Gulf of Mexico

to flirt with close-budded cherry trees

and tease the jackets off tourists on the Mall.

 

The sharp bite of winter

still lurks in the shadows,

but the sun-licked day is stretching itself,

a sweet confection

demanding to be savored.

 

Backspacing

Strange Ways

“You humans mourn in strange ways”

the voice wakes me from my dream

of backspacing to the beginning

on the old Underwood typewriter

my mother once used –

and I think, yes, how strange

to focus on the keys my mother tapped,

mostly the words of my father

so clear there was no

room for interpretation,

but the rhythm was

her domain alone,

where she elicited a pulse

from each word she typed,

black keys, white letters,

clickety, clickety,

white paper, black letters,

the words clear on the page,

yet still she would search

for just the right key —

but to what or to where

she never would say.