Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
1. One Hawk
Where do the doves sleep? wasn’t a question I ever asked myself, but today I know the answer. They sleep in the evergreen by the side of our house.
I know because I have a dawn hawk now. For two days in a row, I’ve caught this glide in the corner of my eye, followed by a wingflap-panic sound and a dozen doves bursting from the branches, followed by the hawk—nothing in its talons—down the block to perch in one of the leafless trees lining the street. Maybe it’s hungry, maybe it’s irritated, but still it’s the Silhouette of Morning.
Inside the house, I’ve got the news on, and the humans aren’t nearly as dignified. Maybe someday. Maybe someday we’ll figure things out and the talk won’t be about the price of oil, and what happened overnight with the Nikkei Average, and idiots comparing epidemiologists to Dr. Mengele. Anyway, this morning seems like an okay time to hope:
So I Went to This Really Weird Scuba Class,
and right off, someone started yelling.
She screamed, “A wet suit’s the same thing as Hitler,”
and a bunch went, “Yeah!”
and sang God Bless America.
Or they tried,
but they weren’t too great at it:
For one, they got squeaky
on the high notes;
and for two, more than half forgot the words,
adding “rocket’s red glare” and “O say can you see”
before settling
on Frosty the Snowman.
When the teacher showed them two flippers,
they booed,
and when he held up a snorkel,
“Booo!” again,
and when he told them,
“Now, this is an air tank,” that was it:
A man hucked a chair,
then they all stormed out…
And it came to pass after seven days
that the waters of the flood were upon them,
and the rain was upon the earth for forty days and nights
’til the hills under heaven were covered, and all
in whose nostrils was the breath of life,
every living substance was destroyed.
Except for some us
who are out here swimming with the dolphins now.
They seem like pretty good neighbors too,
at least to me.
2. One Neighborhood
I’m not going to fake it here and say this year wasn’t full of bad news. It was. But it’s also time for the holidays now; as in, holy and also plural; as in, a whole season of days to focus on what’s better: on what’s meaningful, and possible, and more. Hopefully this parable helps point us in that direction:
Because No One Could Think of Where They Put It,
the whole town had to pitch in.
Yes, it was really annoying,
but everyone tried, calling out
across fences and such.
“Anyone check in the couch cushions yet?”
“Did you look by the clock in the kitchen?”
“How ’bout on the mantle?”
“We don’t have a mantle.”
“One time, I found my keys in the freezer.”
“Me too,” a man said, “but it wasn’t there.”
It might have helped to know what they were searching for.
Some thought it must be
concern for others
since they hadn’t seen much of that lately.
Others figured justice
needed finding;
others mercy,
but they couldn’t be sure.
In the meantime, neighborhoods
got straightened up a little,
and a dog who’d been stuck in a basement
was found and taken home:
so hungry,
so happy-after-lonely.
“Well…” a man said,
and “That’s right,” a woman answered,
“we’ll meet here
and do this tomorrow.”
Not a plan, exactly…
more humble than that.
But things keep turning up
the more they look around.
Rob Carney’s first collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens, is out now from Stormbird Press, and his new book of poems, Call and Response, is available from Black Lawrence Press. Previous books include Facts and Figures, The Last Tiger is Somewhere, The Book of Sharks, and 88 Maps.
Read an interview with Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: “The Ocean is Full of Questions.”
Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header image by Ronny Wolf, courtesy Shutterstock.
