Dogs and the Cold Snap

We pretend the discipline of once-a-day feeding,
old raggedy assed Coco and the Queensland Heeler.
They do their morning dance as the dishes are put before them
with steam rising through the dry food from the heated weenies.
It is their moment of glory.

This cold snap has got to me, too; I see them at the glass
door having gulped their food, their tortured eyes expecting
sympathy from the cold. I too have tortured eyes, seeing no solution
to the broken completion of the book. Up here at my writing perch,
I watch old Joe arrive on the block.

It’s Thursday, trash day, and the sweeper comes to
our side of the street and Joe must park on the east side.
Bundled against the cold, he moves slowly at his first house
with clippers in one hand snipping off the hedge runners poked out,
delaying taking down the heavy mower.

Coco preens in the patch of sun on the hardwood
while Alice watches Sue pluck her brows before the upstairs
mirrors. I sit dumbly in pajama bottoms and sweatshirt, my imagination
somewhere else, daunted about money and the coming Christmas and what
my youngest will do with herself.

The motor noise of Joe’s power edger drifts up carrying
memory of our first meeting some years ago when the oldest
rented at my brother’s place one town north, and since then the
world has dramatically shifted. This cold can be pushed against with
purposeful activity yet to come to mind.

I must muster some purpose, pick up the first tool,
whatever it is to be, dress for cold and find hope the way
Joe does with his maintained gardening machines. I can see
him thinking from here as he rolls down the mower. He’s my man,
politically. We both lost bigtime.

“Sonsabitches” he calls the present administration.
“They’re not Canadians!” Joe says. “They wouldn’t know
peace if it hit ‘em in the ass.” He gets out his eight foot ladder
and stands on the not-a-step top to perfectly round off the treetop
of his number three house. Little Joe is 68.