Last Drive

"Who wants to go for a ride?"

Once upon a time with those magic words
I could rouse joyful bouncing
Barking and tail wagging
In a full-body wriggle of endless elastic electricity

Now
Those words warrant a weary opening of one brown eye
Glazed over with a cataract
Seeing ghosts awash with Vaseline
And perhaps just enough to avoid bumping into walls

A slow giddy-up get up for the front end
Handled completely separate from the back
With a little help from my hands lifting on his hips
The old Poodle finally stands
Swaying slightly side to side
Equilibrium slightly out of whack

One painful walk out to the truck later
Has him planted in his seat
Chin on the sill of the open side window
At least this ride left in him

Time to go

Tempered Split Dream

Sometimes
She still dreamed of
The feel of
The fine wood grain in the handle
Running silkily perpendicular to her fingers

The tug towards the floor
From the honed head of the axe
Balanced upon the fulcrum of her hand
Gripping tightly to the belly of the haft
With the knob end angled upwards to the sky

Liquid dripped with a steady beat
Which she sometimes taps out
The memory a catchy tune
One that she often dances to

A waltz through some odds and ends
With a deft foot placement here
Then a half spin to plant a toe just so
Following a red placement diagram
A dance she doesn't want to forget

Those nice bits and bobs strewn about
Were once a very unpleasant whole
Creased and separated with ease
A patchwork assemblage in reverse

And just like that
The world was a much kinder place

White Shirt Blues

I can never keep a white shirt clean
Be it food dirt or other
Some foul substance will stain it

Frankly
I blame the weight loss
For if I had not lost those seventy-five pounds
Then I never would have fit into this space

Aluminum walls sprayed with shiny white polyurethane
Covered in brown anti-corrosion coating
In turn bathed in all the greasy oily dirt
That a jumbo Boeing aircraft can kick up with its tires

The ten years passage
Since I had last fit into this vertical coffin shaped place
Had clouded my memory
Erasing the difficulty level of squeezing past the nose landing gear assembly
With the flat wall of the wheel well to your back
While stepping sideways on odd bits of structure
And carefully squeezing one's belly and clothing past sharp edges to the front

First came a crimson smear just below my breast
As the red grease from a fitting pressed hard against me
Slowly making a teacher's correction mark upon the blank white of my shirt
Distracting me so
That I missed a sharp pigtail end of twenty thousandths safety wire
Looping incompletely off of the downlock sensor canon plug
Allowing it to pierce the snowy fabric of the t-shirt
Tearing fibers gently
Silently
Until finally pricking my skin
And making me notice its action
Drawing a drop of blood as price of passage

In the confining area at last
Giving the area a five minute inspection with mirror and flashlight
Fulfilling the requirements of my task card
Which clearly state:
"Visual inspection performed within touching distance"
I'm left to ponder my results

A cut belly
Bruised chest
Grease and blood on the front of my shirt
Dirt, oil, and the odd sticky substance on the back

A pressing need to pee
And the validation that I can't keep a white shirt clean to save my life

Falling Water

"Tap tap tappity tap"

A long nailed manicured hand sound of impatience

Played out upon an old piece of plywood

By drops of water from a metal eave

Straight down eighty feet

Pushed this way and that by the breeze

Almost crystalline teardrops

Squeezed to their ultimate aero shape

Terminal velocity achieved

Target in sight

An Alcoa Aluminum stencil on the veneer

Blue logo paint faded by past sun and storms

Ultimately splashing down

Forming a momentary crater

In the slickly thin watery film

A hazardous place for any strider to skate today

Gone all too soon in steamy rise

Evaporating to invisibility

Leaving the old shipping flat to bake

Fading away in the heat