I dress first putting on my socks
Then my shirt—I need good habits.
– Gary Soto (“Dr. Freud Please”)
Shorts, shirt, jeans, socks and crocs
to stand before a fuzzy mirror,
I bang my gums and remember
Soto’s lines apply when my mind
is off—writing poetry, trying
to make more of the more mundane.
So much personified, all our little totems
a flutter in flight, hop from ground
to branch as if their brain were mine.
The blackbirds come in a mob
cackling for something sweet beneath
the Honey Locust dripping bloom
into a puddle of green. Junkos
watch from the rail, woodpeckers
stand in line for the leaky faucet,
a drop at a time. It’s easy to forget
who I am when I could have been
anything—I need good habits.
drycrikjournal 