If the Ups Don't Get You, Then the Downs Certainly Will

Alternately floating then sinking
In seemingly endless cycles
Power up
Power down
Gear down
Gear up
Pressurize
Depressurize

In between was the sweet spot
The modulate and cruise
Skipping along the atmosphere
Supported upon arms of flexing metal

No smoke or mirrors
Wires or computer generated effects
Just triple auto-piloted in solid state
For redundant reduced vertical separation

From forty-thousand feet
It feels like I can see forever
From five foot eight inches
It feels like I am blind

I live for the moments I rise
Upwardly mobile at long last
Another mote in the jetstream
Rushing along that-a-way

But the fuel never lasts forever
With scheduled stops growing nigh
Until coming back down to earth
I die a little bit inside

Noodling

A favorite song
Taken hostage
By a reverse recipe villain
Held hostage in poor taste
With sour notes
Of collapsed acidic waste

Apple A-flats
Hanging on treble clefs
Bolstered by orange C-sharps
Runs and arpeggios
Dipped in savory gravy
Repeats in ivory cream

A broccoli chainsaw
Attacked the medley
Tearing it apart
Note for note
Forcing four part harmony
From single sweet melody
Poured audibly
Into an ice cream float

Yes
Of course I still love it
All split staffs
And mangled notes
Of sweet and savory
Riding high in banana split boats
Spouting soundtrack accompaniment
Jingle jangling guitars
Copper kettle drums
And Grandma's kitchen smells
Giving prescribed comfort
Till the closing credit scroll
Reaches its end

Lawn Boy Grass Bag Kit: $9.99

Walking the polished cement floors of Home Depot
The rectangular green and white box called to me
"Lawn Boy - Grass Bag Kit"!
It loudly exclaimed

And upon a much smaller orange clearance sticker
Explaining its place upon a back-of-the-store end cap
"$9.99"
Was almost conspiratorially whispered to me

Acquiring this item would complete my set
Complementing the Lawn Boy mower
With matching chute and leaf bag kit
Which had been given to me by my father

This after yet another phone call half way across the country
Where I had mentioned that I missed our old Lawn Boy mowers
The ones from the 1970's and '80's
Lightweight two-stroke affairs of blue smoke and fury

He had almost made a fetish of them
Always having a couple extra old ones up in the attic
To be used for parts after Supermanning them back down
Using the twelve foot attic access in the garage

I'd called him in triumph
The day I'd bought my first broken down Harley Davidson
Starting it up and revving it so he could hear
The undoubtedly impressive sound through the phone

I'd called him in wonder
The day I'd discovered carburetor icing
As my truck chugged its way into work on a winter morning
With white frost coating the old small two barrel Rochester

But this news today
Was about Lawn Boy stuff
And just had to be shared!
I knew he'd be so pleased with my ten dollar trophy

Now this last time I called my father on the phone
He lay upon his front lawn
And never said a thing to me
All I heard were my mother's panicked words

"Your father's had a heart attack!
And I don't think he's living......"

Later
After the blur of travelling ten hours back home
To pick out his simple flat topped casket
And drop off his nice suit
So he could look good one more time

I took a few moments to sit near him when we were alone
So I could tell him what a great Lawn Boy part I'd found
And how it was going to collect grass like gangbusters
Even though that bit turned out to be a lie

As now more than a decade later
You can still walk to the back of my garage
And look up on my top shelf
Where a familiar green and white box resides quietly unopened

Forever proudly proclaiming though the years of dust:

"Lawn Boy - Grass Bag Kit........$9.99"