Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 13

Sweet Jesus Wading

Through the fallen magnolia leaves 

in some stranger’s backyard.

they look like thousands 

of brown flat bottomed boats 

all shuffling to the shore 

of an imaginary lake.

Leaves me looking for 

drunken fishermen asleep 

by the fires 

while the dancers 

keep time with dry heads 

of waterlilies

and steal all the fish.

Somewhere in the Delta

In my kitchen in Florida

the lid clinks shut

on the little china dish

where I keep the Splenda

I shake two packets

by holding one end

then tear and pour

into my wife’s coffee

I drink mine black.

But in some lady’s kitchen

in the delta the china

still holds real sugar

and the ghost of

a very old lady stirs

a spoon full of sugar

into a cup that isn’t there.

The Lake Lays Long and Silver

Flat like some stainless steel

roller rink up to the unseen dam.

In the shadows, along the bank

we sit in our jon boat,

five horse power and a pair of paddles.

z

You wanted a trolling motor

but I went for twelve dollar oars,

being naturally tight,

often in ways that don’t save me money,

but in this case, the only loss

is maybe scaring a few fish

when I make a dull thud

on the bottom of the boat

after rowing a bit to get us closer

up under a low limb, or near a rotting stump,

the favorite hang outs of the bluegill

I am so fond of eating.

You are the better fisherman,

by far, but it is up to me to tell the story,

the bugs singing too loud in the trees,

the smell of the stagnant water

back here in the darkened edges,

where there is low enough light 

we can see a few feet below,

but not down the fish we want to catch.

In position again, with little drift,

we rebait our single shiny barbed hooks with worms.

I try not to think about whether they feel pain,

nor the fact I am sacrificing their lives

to try to trick a beautiful bream onto my hook.

Careful to remove it so as not to tear its mouth,

especially if it’s a bit small

so I can throw it back and tell myself

it will live to be caught another day.

The worm layers my fingers

with a series of sticky substances,

blood, waste, and some secretion that seems to be neither,

leaving my fingers stickey and smelly.aAn earthy kind of stink,

 almost pleasant as it makes me know I am fishing.

The bugs have moved down from the trees

and are buzzing around me, so I spray bug spray

on my hands and rub them on all my exposed skin,

careful to keep it out of my eyes,

but it is impossible to stop the fierce burn

where the last bream sliced and pricked my palm

as I removed the hook and set him loose

for his final swim in a bucket of water.

The sting is also in the pricks of the hook,

where I was earlier worried about

all the bodily fliud of the worms getting

into the fresh holes in my fingers.

I hope the Off! Is a sanitizing agent,

not just a poison in am injecting into my fingers.

But for all the bugs and worm guts

and the fetid smell of tree stumps and pond scum,

we fill the bucket with supper-sized bream.

You start the motor and we head back to the dock,

98 eating size, that’s almost the bag limit between us.

I clean and scale while you put away the gear

and rinse the boat.

After you tote the motor to the shed,

you help me finish the cleaning

as the sun is replaced by swarms of mosquitoes

who clearly cannot the label

of the bug repellant we religiously coat ourselves with.

We go inside,

tomorrow we will eat well,

tonight its bologna sandwiches, and bedtime.

A Wasteful Thing

Its an odd thing to think of in February,

even in north Florida

 we don’t cut our yards this time of year.

Yet, here I am, thinking

of the smell of half burnt gas and oil,

mixed with the smell of fresh cut grass

drying and fermenting in the summer heat.

Two of my favorite smells,

not sure which I prefer,

but if I had cologne

that was a mix of both

I would wear it with a swagger,

even though the whole concept

of lawns and mowing are a waste

and a crime against the earth.

Some sins have such a sweet smell,

even knowing better doesn’t

sway our attraction.

Bring on early summer

and the sound of mowers.

The Last King of Denmark

Lives in Rotterdam

with his dog who loves fish

and thus smells rather

strongly of seafood

a bit past its date.

Or at least I suppose,

I have no way of knowing

though maybe I could ask

someone who does

But it all sounds

rather believable to me

so I’ll just tell it

as if it was true.

(note: this poem has nothing to do with the real current king of Denmark, Frederick X who does not live in Rotterdam, [which is not part of Denmark] and may or may not have a dog that may or may not eat fish)

The Saturday Morning

Laundry basket waits

for the appointed hour

filled only with my blue-gray

 long sleeve button down shirts,

my navy briefs, and white diabetic tube socks,

and the khaki britches, all in various states of wear.

The basket sits in quiet expectation

in the large open area of our master bath,

knowing soon I will carry it to the laundry off the kitchen,

to be whirred and stirred and soaked and soaped

and dried to cleanliness and near perfection.

For today is, indeed, Saturday.

The More One Crosses

Bridges, or maybe the more bridges

one crosses, at some point

one learns to look down at the water

or the dry canyon

and ponder the how and why

and who built this bridge

and how was I so lucky

as to cross it,

and should I burn it down

and why did they pick this spot

surely there was a ferry

and maybe before that a row boat

and a guy who operated it,

or if the pass is narrow enough,

a fallen log, a foot bridge

and what if this bridge is a metaphor

what if it isn’t there

and I am not here

crossing it, or even being

one who has crossed

so many bridges

that one begins to think.

If I Could Still Eat Them

So many things were lost
many salvaged, almond flour
for wheat, cauliflower for mashers
and now even pretty good white bread.

I still make sausage cream gravy
with heavy cream instead of flour
and we serve it over white bread toast,
spaghetti squash and damn good ice cream.

If I had known when I was eating
two Big Macs at a time,
or a dozen Krispy Kremes,
or a box of nutty buddies in a sitting,
they were gonna try to kill me,

I dont know if I would have stopped
or maybe just enjoyed them more.

I still miss grits, though we have
really good soft flour tortilla shells.

But I would love to bake a cherry or blueberry pie,
or maybe my old specialty,
apple with brown sugar and rum.

At sixty-four, and trying to make it
to my eighties, alive, with both feet
and not even blind, those sorts of pies
like bowling or playing football are things
I can remember, but never hope to do again.

Maybe on my birthday one year,
we will go to the pieberry,
and I will have a slice…

If I told you of a Donkey Cart

If I told you everything I know

about a donkey cart,

from its rusty iron brackets

and worn wooden planks

to its old wooden wheels

with hand hewn spokes

and why the brake lever attaches

to the cart and not the axle,

and how the springs on the seat

this old fat men sits on

squeak every time we roll

through a gutted piece of road,

and how the boxes in the back

rattle and jump and yet

the donkey pulls us all,

though on the steeper stretches

I have to get down and walk,

until we hit the one spot so steep,

I lean in and push to keep

my little beast from rolling back.

If I told you how the leather harness

frayed and the metal rings where it joins

around the head shine with the smooth wornness

from an age older than this donkey,

 though not older than me,

if I told you these things,

and more, you would grow weary

from the listening,

and want to know about the path,

who carved it into the earth

and where we were going that day,

and what was in those boxes

 that cracked and jangled as we rode.

You might ask after the donkey,

like you really cared,

as if you knew his mother

from some time ago.

But I would tell you the sky was blue

 with only a few scattered clouds

and the sun shone down on my dirty straw hat

 and to tell you neither the donkey nor I

failed to return and the wheels

on the cart still can go round.

Sunday Morning Storm

You can tell by the way 

the trees grow

this was a homestead

if you look through the thicket

you can still see the steps 

leading to nowhere

and a little further in,

the crumbling bricks of a fallen chimney.

This was the place 

of my mother’s people’s birth

until the storm of ‘38 came 

and took the house away.

Mama and her mama were in the barn

milking the cow.

Her papa was at the kitchen table 

studying his sermon

and the two little sisters were playing

on the floor when they 

all went up to heaven

and mama and her mother moved up

to Jackson because no bodies,

no house were ever found.

No marker tell the story,

and all the people there

that day are now dead

and I am the last one to know this story,

and soon enough I will be gone,

so I hope you will remember it for me.