Ode to the Dog Tick

Never was a parable so small,
so blood filled as the legend
of the dog tick. Out in the garden
where butterflies tarry
and startle, those
who have shadows
meander by.
Remember when they
began one miracle
and another? It was
twenty-seven cacoons
resurrecting. Oh yes!
we were eating
our break-fasts. Woke up and just
started eating. All the noises
of the world rewinding
but not like the sound of a tick
as it burns and snaps
in the ashtray
as he moves on.
Burn tick burn, bother not the dog.
Leave behind your treasure.
We wait for the return,
the one on the wind, one
past the famine-filled graves.
Allah Kareem, the Most Generous.
Allah the Most Merciful and Wise.
The tick fasts and gorges and dies.
We only watch a while
as we wait and prepare
for the parable lives on.

Ode to the Two Pointers

Hanging up there between our clothes line
and theirs, a hand could borrow sugar
from our open windows, that close,
a two-pointer hung by the haunches, eyes all froze.
We came home running to see what was shot,
heard it all the way down by Old Man Riley's garage,
a two pointer, not a doe. Everyone heard it.
It was big news, big game and there he was,
hanging over the squash and winter iris
looking out like that, just looking.
A pressure cooker steamed inside
the kitchen window, it tooted and hissed
while he dangled there waiting to be divided.
Takes a long time to cut up a deer like that,
and longer still, to bag one.
Times were pretty lean, the winters pretty cold.
La ilaha ilalah, this in the fortress of plenty.