A Writer Interrupted


The intrusion included something
about a zoo birth,
a cousin's engagement
and a tropical storm
forming near Cuba.

It trampled on a train of thought
that festered someplace
in the backwaters of my youth,
that was creeping, crawling,
unsteadily to be sure
but determined,
through the muck of my history
to the restless brown waters of my brain
where I was half a thought 
from grasping it.

But it was obliterated
by a baby orangutan,
Moira and a cop named Matt,
and a lot of swirling noise and rain
called Claudine.

They were accompanied by a voice
saying, "I'm not interrupting anything,
am I?."

It's an annoying little interloper,
this need to say “No.”




A Gator on the Florida Course


One Saturday, my father
took me for a round of golf.
On the third hole,
we saw a gator sunning
on the banks of the water trap.

I sliced my drive so wide,
the ball headed nowhere
but toward that glistening pond,
overshot the reptile's snout by a fraction,
rolled up to his tail tip.

“Want to play that lie," joked
the old man.
I figured a penalty stroke
was a lesser evil than being eaten.

The air was hot
and the parched course
did my body no favors.
I felt the weight on my bones,
the meat, as I teed up
for a second time.

The eye that never should
have left the ball
took its aim from long, overlapping teeth.

The brown fairway was a lie.
The way to the green
was through the jaws of the beast.
My hands sweated as my elbows froze.
My head bobbed like a fly in current.

This creature looked big and mean enough
to feed on anything:
clubs and carts, fathers and sons.
It could devour the entire par three
if it was hungry enough.

We survived that day.
We survived other days.
But nothing seems safe.
Even now, that gator is eating its way towards me.