The Animals Are Out
Sunday morning, the animals are out:
woodpecker, squirrels, my neighbor’s dogs.
I hear claws scratching, look up, and damn
if those squirrels aren’t racing up and down
my sweet gum tree. There goes that pileated
pecker, hammering the dead pine. And the dogs?
Don’t get me started. They could wake the dead.
The wind’s picking up. The nearby creek’s
babbling again. Guess the water’s rising.
I know. The woodpecker, the neighbor’s dogs
could care less, but days like these I wonder
how bones could ever break and mend? And if
our bodies float like driftwood, why do we drown?
Yet shake us, for sure our bones will snap,
and I’d be the first to drown in the flood.
There’s that scratching again.
Like I said, my animals are out.
Damned squirrels. I bet they think
they can fly like birds, run like dogs,
even outsmart a man, or outlast him.