Whenever I let the dog out
onto our small back patio
on sunny afternoons
and he lays on familiar brick
scratching his ears,
nose curious and wandering,
I remember my father
who, in the endless days of retirement,
learned the lawn better
than his calloused palms:
every humpbacked tree and drooping limb,
every snake and gopher hole,
every new and fallen anthill,
every cobweb on the lamppost,
where to find toads after rain,
how to catch them–
when he did not strive to create utopia
by chiseling trees into magazine models,
I often found him on a patch
of freshly-mown grass,
scratching his smoky, sun-basked beard,
waiting for the wind to speak,
to say more to him than I ever did.
(originally published in Black Elephant Lit, Spring 2016)