Dewey Astray

Put blue tape over the white molding running
all the way around our house this morning
that I painted yesterday.
Today I touch up the gray above it and remove the tape.

Do I need to preserve the assumption
that this writing has some kind of interred meaning,
some rind of truth at its core?
What a sloppy job

I’m doing, actually!—not even matching paint correctly—
low-gloss over flat, looking like
jungle camouflage more than not.
The red squirrels seem

to have vanished without a trace. The chipmunk
still shows up, but I have yet to get
a shot of him—could
still happen, maybe, but, God, he’s skittery.

Wow, here comes that evil tuxedo cat, smaller than our Orzo—
gray squirrels raising a ruckus—
Tuxedo sitting on a slab of our garden circle
by the red clay carp.

I put my painting shorts on for this morning’s task
and wore my Teva sandals, but then I took them off—
temperature still below sixty degrees—feet stinging a little
from the cold, and now they’re

soiled from walking around the house among the hosta.
Now here on my back-porch perch,
everything that’s to be seen right there to the eye, as usual—
metal chicken, purple-wingéd pig;

young maple with its sausage branches;

at the South end of the yard, my belovéd compost hole.
In my Merriam Park, St. Paul, neighborhood,
Tuxedo Kitty’s gone, and the squirrels are quiet.