A Few Times in the Recent Past

Same time as yesterday

the handtrucks

carry it away. We were masked

in anticipation of the rain.

We’d already renamed all the months of the year

starting with Reptile.

Our records

were sealed.

The gang had gotten lost

amongst all that dubious new construction

out back in the cornfield;

we didn’t hear from them for a week,

maybe more.

We were drawing giraffes

on sheets of graph paper

when the helicopters arrived.
We’d shed our horns by then;

it wasn’t like we needed them

to tell us that!

Talk about irony

is outlawed around here now.

“It’s a pity,” she said, “and the roses

were just coming into bloom.”

They don’t post the speed limit

for just that reason.