Z221 at work
An Easter bonnet
John 1.3
While the City Sleeps
Waukeshans complacently enjoy
their town-grown-to-city
with it’s well-policed, clean,
safe streets
and the cerulean blue skies
overhead;
or when it rains
the rain washing everything anew
and flowing
if heavy
away like dirty bathwater down the
drain
out of sight, out of mind; oh yes,
we think of everything and take
for granted
that the solid terra-firma plane
on which we work and play
is as storybooked as it
appears
and that the sky overhead here is relatively terrorless.
That covers two of the three
physical dimensions
but we never think about the
seething subterranean world
beneath the city where that dirty
bathwater flows
unless we happen to be with the
Sanitation Department
and as far as I know, they aren’t
talking.
My friends, we co-exist over a
nether-world
about which we never think
and the Sewer Raccoons down there
- that’s right -
count on our ignorance.
Their profligacy festers beneath
us
growing daily, like whiskers
becoming a dread-locked beard
but we don’t know it because we
trust in our local government
and in what we see.
The coons, woe to us! Phantoms of this opera are
just a few feet beneath Waukesha
until nightfall, when every storm
grate at every corner
becomes an open doorway into our
elysian yards and gardens.
Marauders on velvet paws which
they keep licking, masked,
they steal about under cover of
nocturnal shadows, late,
when the windows of our proud
houses show black.
It is then the Sewer Coons take
over the town; by day,
These slick creatures have free
rein in their underworld,
bartering our garden produce in
little shops and bazaars
in their sub-city
where they swarm and reproduce
like rabbits crazy.
They have their own school
district where all the little coons
Study burglary and ankle-nipping.
So far they are content with their
lowly position, hence,
the Sanitation Department, the
Mayor and the Aldermen
only monitor them and do not tell
us of their
spreading presence.
As Amos or Paul Revere, I
send this warning
for I live nearer the Fox River in one of the town’s ruder huts
and the Sewer Coons are, though
proliferating
concentrated only in our poorer
neighborhoods
at the present time;
by the railroad tracks and the Fox River waterway,
But the storm sewer web is beneath
us all, free and accessible
and even now no one is safe!
I have again lately seen the coons
emerge from the grate at the corner
As has my wife; we know the desolation
Of having our grapes stolen from
our vines;
We’ve actually heard the coons’
little “chick-chick-chick” sounds.
Close-up, we’ve seen the
phosphorescent reflection of their eyes
In our flashlight beams; they run,
are not brazen yet – oh, no -
carrying little bindles over their
hump-ed backs
and make their dash back to their
grated holes.
Furred hit-and-run warriors, in
place,
waiting for their messiah to come,
perhaps from Milwaukee or Chicago -
The Really BIG Coon,
to marshal
them into an invading army,
Meanwhile waxing stronger in
secret
on Dix grapes and other sacked left-overs;
And sometimes I think I can hear
muffled “tink”s
As they pound on their tiny anvils
under the avenue
Making suits of armor on
foot-pumped forges; flaring
light seems to flash from the
gratings
after the clock has struck twelve
And I go out and listen at my
corner sewer entrance
and hear their Russian-like “YO-OH, HO HO!”
chants
echoing softly up from below.
The Sewer Raccoons are coming,
the
Sewer Raccoons are coming.
[D. Zep Dix 9-19-2002 ]
OK, here it is 5-16-2012, ten years later
but they're STILL coming
