Cricket-Bozo-Clipper And The Chicken Pox

 

By Diane E. Dockum

 

In the 1980s my husband and I raised Black and Tan Coonhounds.

 

Coonhounds, if you are not familiar with them, are large black long-eared, short-haired dogs with tan markings and deep bass voices. Their bark is not so much a woof, as a call to arms. It’s more like a cannon blast in slow motion.

 

Coonhounds have long legs for running down Raccoons in the dead of night, defending corn crops from the little bandits. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the little varmints, but at the time there was a market for this type of dog in our area.

 

My young brother loved this one puppy we had. Ironically, as a pup we named him Cricket, because he was black and he liked to hop around. Actually, he was more like Goofy of Disney fame. He was over enthusiastic and had that little point on the top of his head.

 

Cricket loved Jimmy too. He kept going down over the hill to my parent’s house to hang out with him, so, after a while the two got to be inseparable, and he became my brother’s dog.

 

Sometimes, when you have a large dog that wags his whole body instead of just his tail in the same room with a tiny 80 something woman – she can get a little flustered, and she will call that dog anything that pops into her head.

 

“Bozo! Clipper!” she would blurt out whacking him with her paperback Barbara Cartland romance novel.

 

When visitors came to the door, Cricket would explode into his trademark blast of sound, wag his body, lashing anything in proximity with his whip-like tail. He would run to the door to see who was coming, or better yet, hurl himself to the top of the back of the couch to see out the living room window.

 

Grandma never made it off of that couch fast enough. All 4 ft. 3 of her would rebound from the sofa as he landed, displacing a volume equal to his own mass.

 

“BOZO! Clipper! WHOA… CRICKET!!! Get down!” she would bark as she whomped him with her rolled up newspaper or her paperback romance.

 

Well, when my cousins Nate, Neil, Wayne, baby Leah and their mother Leanne came to the door this one summer afternoon it was played out all over again. Cricket just loved little boys to play with, and he saw Nate, and just started licking him all over. He got him down on the floor, and Nate, laughing and rolling around got thoroughly licked until Grandma’s shrieks of Bozo! Crapper! Clicker! Cricket! brought my brother and sister, Jimmy and Sara from upstairs to assist in the restraint.

 

Cricket had to go wait in the shed until company was gone.

 

For a few days afterward, Cricket was a quieter, gentler dog. We thought he was a remorseful dog, sorry for knocking down the company and getting so worked up. His nose did feel a little warm to the touch, but other than the sleepiness, he seemed okay.

 

After a few more days passed the family went up to camp in Colton on Higley Flow for a swim, where Cricket bolted from the back seat and ran to jump off the dock into the refreshing brown water of the Racquette River. He swam and played with Jimmy. They floated on a giant tractor inner tube, and rowed around in the row boat.

 

When supper time came, everyone was called out of the water to dry off for dinner. They toweled off Cricket. But something about his shinny coat had changed.

 

His fur had fallen out in spots, leaving tiny round bald spots over his entire body. Then my Mom discovered the Pox and they recalled that Nate had recently come down with Chicken Pox.

 

It seems that Cricket had licked the Pox right off of him.

 

 

 

 

 

Carrying a Bag

Carrying a bag of

batteries and face cream

and light bulbs and

toilet paper

 

I stop to watch the river

move around the flat rocks

and feel

like I am moving too

 

The light changes and

the smell of hot dry leaves

fills the air

 

The bag grows inconvenient

as I want to spend

the afternoon walking

in the woods and listening

to the changes in the season

 

A twig snaps

under the weight of a crow

who, startled, leaps above the tree.

What Freedom!

 

 

by Diane E. Dockum

 

Sometimes people think your poems are about your life, well…sometimes they are, but sometimes they’re not anything like your life at all. They’re just a story you thought up in your head. Sometimes we edit ourselves just in case someone might read the poem, and MIGHT think badly of us, or think we really shouldn’t have aired our dirty laundry in public.

I say our power is in the writing, and we should return to it no matter what people think.

The power of writing is that it cleans you out. Even if what you are writing is completely NOT what you are living. The beauty is that no one really knows for sure if the poem is something you lived through, or not. That’s the wonder.

So, write your poem, and let it go.

~~Diane

The Page

 

When I was cut I bled in rage

It poured in ink across the page

I screamed in pain until the

Blood did stop and all was still

 

I felt it leave me like a bird

That suddenly leaps into the air

I felt it drain away as though

My cut had bled me dry

 

I put the page into a book

And closed it up and left it there

And went my merry way

 

But someone found my page of pain

And put it in my face again

This time it only stung me

But, in the mirror of my rage

 

He’d found the pain that I’d bled out

As though that ink had been alive

It brought it back and made it thrive

It tore a hole in what was good

 

It made us hurt more than it should

And so I cauterized the sore

And it will threaten us no more

 

By Diane E. Dockum

Looking For A Poem

 

 

Out walking, looking for a poem

I remembered chores

I should have done

But the day was almost spent

 

The poem hung inside my mind

Like morning fog

Remnants of dreams

Dissolving as the light changed

 

Out walking, standing in places

I had not stood

I waited for the poem to form

Ignoring time – ignoring “shoulds”

 

Deeper into the autumn woods

Inhaling sunlight, fading fast

I came upon deserted toys

A tree house built by little hands

 

With carpet remnants

Nailed fast

Into the wood

A broken chair that in my kitchen

 

Once had stood

And that baby blanket

I wondered where

It had gone

 

Long deserted, faded now it hung

Where once a

Door had been

My poem was there instead.

Welcome to MarbleHillPress!

I hope to share my poetry and short prose, and maybe a few opinions about creative writing. Who knows what will develop here. This is my first attempt at a blog, and I hope I get all the bugs worked out soon.

It’s the 3rd of July, 2011, and Norwood is poised to celebrate. In honor of this I will share my poem called:

 

Fourth Of July

10 am Parade
Passes through the middle of town
Waving flags

Later, that same afternoon,
Lawnmower races in the park,
Hunched men in dirty T-shirts lean into the battle

Fries sizzle in vintage anniversary grease

Hot sun on dirt near the beer tent
Smelling of cotton candy,
Deep-fried bread dough, and armpits

Tired underdressed women
Push sleeping babies in strollers,
Bumping over the grass

Grandma fans her face with a paper plate
In the Bingo tent

A softball “tinks” against an aluminum bat
Generating chatter and shrieks

Twilight cars cruise the road
Searching for wayward teens
Who have not called home for hours

Dimming of the day –
Thinning of the crowd

Cars line the back roads for miles –
Even the dry bridge is full of people

Fireworks display
Including screaming babies, who don’t understand the celebration,
only boom- boom- boom of thunder

Hard core drinkers linger in the semi-dark
With raised voices insinuating accusations of adultery

Spinning red lights appear
As more people decide to call it a night.

 

 

By Diane E. Dockum