« Back to Excerpts

from Tiny Summer Book

Bob Arnold 

						sink

Cooler nights and warm days. Hot working in the sun. We mowed
one place, lawns and a field today. Susan mows with a walkman on her
head listening to classical music or opera, imagine. I'm in a bandana
and headphones hearing my ears ring, mow dim under it all, a
propeller swathing down the field, trimming close the garden edges.
Swallows flying, bombing near me, for the insects flown up from the
fresh cut. I've to only watch for rocks, stumps (fruit trees I had
to cut down over 20 years, I recall each one) and cats. Maybe a
lumpy frog. Dreadful when one is sliced. We break for lunch mustard
and cheese sandwiches, lettuce, fruit and cookies at the backdrop of
two barns. Moss soft underneath us. In shade. Boots in the sun.
A pasture leaning high up hill in the distance where cows usually
settle at this hour. Near an old spring along the sugar bush.
From the farmhouse comes banging in the kitchen sink.






						saw-chips
	
The acupuncturist today said we might have to give
up swimming in the river. Water too cold. In Chinese
medicine the ears prick up she said at the sound of
anything cold. How long have I swum like this? she asks.
All my life. Another  Oh? look. And I don't want to imagine
not following each other down the road and then a skip
path through woods over collapsed stone foundation
walls of an old sawmill. The sawmill once went with the
house we live in. Everything is gone but the stone,
which now work as steps, where you pause always to look
for poison ivy. It's along the river. Where we swim,
sliding by the rock ledge I imagine a water wheel, a
sawyer stepping out to take a leak in the woods while watching
the river. A mound of saw-chips.






						mind


Because of bad knees for a month and told to stay
out of some work I build birdhouses with Carson all
week. Can stand at a table saw. Carson runs for tools,
unwinds the long cord so we can work in the sun.
By the third house after a few days he wants to see this
one painted. Strips off his shirt and in jeans barefoot
he goes at it. The birdhouse dries quickly when the day
is 95 degrees and by the evening we have two in a tree and
the largest one nailed to a post stuck into the pond.
We always notice lots of birds near the pond. We give them
this one. The next one we build will be painted yellow
and we will hang it on the side of our house. A house
on a house. The last one for the week will be built from old
boards, the better to disappear into an ash tree we have in mind.
« Back to Excerpts