Poetry Thursday . . . a little late

Because of the holiday, I'm all goofed up this week. On the Fourth we had a day of sloth, socializing, real concerts starring the kids, and barbecue invitations. Tuesday we had new garage doors, lifters, remotes and keypads installed, and it all went terribly awry. Today I'm still reeling from the garage-door fiasco (they had to come back this morning to fix all the bollixed up business, including their thievery of our ladder), and because yesterday was so relaxing, today feels like Monday and I keep consulting the calendar only to review activities for the wrong day. Frankly, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, except for getting the garage-door installers to redo and make it all properly functional without harassing them.

Oh, yeah! It's Thursday. That means Poetry Thursday. And because I was derelict in my duty last week, I feel the guilty obligation to post something, even though it isn't any good.

My previous post about raccoons confirmed that I'm fairly blackhearted when it comes to nuisance wildlife. I think it's cute and love to watch it--from a distance. But I'm a beast, too, and I won't put up with the invasion of my territory if it results in damage.

I wrote this before the raccoon post, when I had not yet been enlightened as to which animal was creeping about at night. It was clear to me that it wasn't the squirrels, because they wouldn't take the bait by day--but I got a notion--imagine that squirrels were stealthily creeping about at night and hoarding things that they wouldn't touch by day?

The Porch

One by one the night squirrels come
silent and haunting
tree to tree
roof to roof
like acrobats in “Crouching Tiger”
furred and tailed.

Wrought-iron pillar to suet cage
blue spruce to hopper feeder
spilling the miniature birdbath

hungry
marauding
devouring stale rice crackers I tossed to taunt
whoever would take the bait.

Next time I’ll leave
wasabi peas.