Rick Campbell: Another List of Things I Have Attended to Sloppily
The wheelbarrow’s mismatched handles, one sideways so that it’s narrower than its mate. The garden gates, once my pride, now slanted, ajar, hinges rusted and failing. The rails of Della’s tree house that somehow escaped their nails. The driveway, forever rutted, waiting its promised gravel. The Chinaberry trees, invaders that grow like weeds. The red heeler who so hates a bath. The gutters--pine straw and dirt turned to mulch. The roof, compromised, its leaks. The front doorknob rattling, loose, that one day will fail to let me in. The unspoken that can never be repaired.
Rick Campbell is a poet and essayist living on Alligator Point, Florida. His latest collections of poems are Gunshot, Peacock, Dog. (Madville Publishing, 2018) and Provenance (Blue Horse, 2020).
Copyright © 2020 by Rick Campbell. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and Blue Horse Press.
As I fight myself saving monarchs with swarms of termites, my inner child says, “Do I gotta?”
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