Home Is Where the Ravens Aren’t
My friend Dale likes to watch the birds
in his backyard steal the kibbles he feeds
the dogs he’s sitting for in Arizona.
“The birds are often common ravens,”
he writes. “Do these ravens ever come
from Baltimore? Do they ever utter,
‘Nevermore’?” I ask. He hasn’t answered
yet, but says his patio needs cleaning,
covered as it is with bird shit, dogs
now reunited with their owner,
birds gone back to Baltimore
or off to try to find Lenore or free
lunch in another neighborhood.
Late May. It’s getting hot in Arizona.
Dale maintains the heat is screwing up
his golf game, but it’s hard to picture
how the dumbest game I ever tried
to play could get more screwed up
than it is already. Okay, that’s just
my take on golf, and Dale’s my friend
so if he wants to play that game,
more power to him. Anyway, in three
more weeks, he’ll be returning
to his native Waukasha, Wisconsin,
where the heat will be less brutal,
and he’ll have no dogs to sit for,
and the bird shit will be only random
droppings here and there. Most likely
robins, sparrows, chickadees, or wrens,
You can go to Arizona for the winter,
you can be a Snowbird with a big RV,
you can take a cruise ship to Bermuda,
but there really is no place like home.
W. D. Ehrhart's newest books are Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems and a revised edition of Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, both from McFarland.