The Squirrels

Our puppies haven’t noticed

the squirrels yet,

the ones who scurry across

our backyard on a power line,

as if it is the freeway in our neighborhood.

Bono, our previous Boxer,

believed he could

jump high enough

to snap his jaws

on them.

But no matter how many times

I told him he would never

be able to jump that high,

he still believed

the next jump would be the one.

 

Dogs are no different

than humans.

We believe the next moment

will be the one moment

when we catch what

we don’t even need—

our own little squirrels

high above in the trees.

 

For now the squirrels

don’t have to

scurry above our backyard,

across the power line,

across the shed,

across the above ground pool,

across what we call

the Redneck Rivera.

They can walk

now that Bono is

not back there to bark.

But this silence won’t last.

It never does.

Noise is chaos,

ears are strange bedfellows.

One right, one left,

never joining in the middle.

Do they really hear

the same thing?

 

Our lights went out early

one morning. Took the

utility workers three hours

to get them back on.

In the basement

where I write my sermons,

it was too dark to work.

Basements need light.

Darkness and dankness

do their hanky-panky

in basements,

so I climbed the stairs,

looked out the window

in the front room.

To make sure.

That my house

was not the only

one.

 

Later, I saw a utility worker.

He said a squirrel

was electrocuted.

He ate through a line

in the transformer.

I wondered if

the squirrel world

had electrocuted

one of their own.

Maybe a serial killer.

Maybe it’s the fat one,

the one that runs

across the power line

in the Redneck Rivera,

while shaking his tail.

Who knows what

really happened up there?

Do squirrels have funerals?

Maybe they say,

“Here lies Rocky.

He cracked the wrong nut.

Now he’s dead.”