Clouds melt like butter in a pan
sky as blue as Grandma’s pots
the dog whines again to go outside
but I’m too busy describing 
how the dog wants to go outside
a whimper rising to a peevish growl
Grandma had a dog named Willie
and a cat named Whitey
summers down in the cellar
cool and damp
her liver-spotted hands 
placing eggs on the scale 
the arrow leaping to extra large
the dog still wants to go out
to her boxed-in little urban yard
and then she’ll want back in
but Willie roamed free
from farm to farm
sniffing cattails on the edge of ponds
chasing rabbits deep into the woods
emerging into sunlight
disappearing into cornfields
showing up in time for dinner
on the dusky front porch
while the Indiana sun went down
like a fat ripe tomato.
                        

I remember very little
of my brother-in-law
trying to teach me—
a gangly bookish teen—
how to build a fence,
other than how hot
it was in the Indiana 
afternoon and how 
much digging it took
to sink a fence post.

I remember better 
how it felt walking
on fence tops as a 
young child, arms out,
narrow rails slick under
my Converse greys, 
thunder rumbling west,
the wood shed where I fell,
the arrowhead-shaped scar 
just above my left knee.