resurrected from a dark closet.
her attraction, we speculate.
Animals love company.
Species doesn't matter.
Rooming house on Wheeling Island WVA
with old carousel horses as front porch ornaments.
........
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 in archen coves and caverns
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’s 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;
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
An Amos or a 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 our 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 shoulders
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 grapes and sacked left-overs;
And sometimes we think we can hear
muffled “tink”s
As they pound on their tiny anvils
under Arcadian 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 “YO-OH, HO HO!”
chants
Echoing softly up from below;
The Sewer Raccoons are coming, the
Sewer Raccoons are coming!
[David Dix 9-19-2002]
It''s an hour broadcast; sit back and listen.
^.^
DZD, US Army, Fort Leonard Wood MO 1958
Hon. Discharge 1962
all the gunning I ever wanted
and then some
....................
Photo by Jeffrey Means, (Mr. Means Photography) Brooklyn NY
(Dee's brother)
................
Morning Glory redux
2nd growth from last year's errant seed
(see previous posts)
shown Friday 2-15-13;
a blossom appears, one.
Will there be more,
will the vine ascend to the window-top again?
Some things are Die Hard at the Odd Fellows.
