Waiting for the Woodman

A mudpack of pigs on devastated ground

Seven dark grey sows, two red males pound-for-pound

His truck is here, but the woodman’s not around.

 

Greed hasn’t left here a single speck of green

In one corner, the pond wears a greasy sheen

The man who sells firewood, nowhere to be seen.

 

Perhaps he fell, they ate him? I look about

Every last inch of him snuffled past flat snout?

Bacon-makers scoff humans, oh have no doubt.

 

The seven sows doze, their skin suncreamed with mud

Like beached seals they lie, fat ladies in a pod

Bristly boys keep nudging, try to stir their blood.

 

If a sow stands, a male tries to get the jump

Pushes, nuzzles, slurps between those hams so plump

Putting on the hard word to climb aboard and hump.

 

Sow shrieks or grunts, turns heavy breather away

Makes it clear she’d prefer a meal any day

Big-balled boys could use some lessons in foreplay.

 

Waiting for the woodman, feeling a voyeur

The sunbaking swine stare back, and I defer:

“Vegetarian! No pork, no chops, no sir!”

 

The machos stand apart, froth-mouthed, rejected

Now one mounts the other’s back, ill-directed

A few futile thrusts, he flops off, dejected.

 

Dumb anthropomorphism, to myself I say

But think I understand the red males’ dismay

(Certain lobby would claim proof Nature´s gay).

 

Ah, woodman’s arrived, is at his back door

Leave the sows to dream of stale loaves by the score

And yes, I now know why a boar is called boar!

 

With a trailer-load of logs for winter’s stove

I head more slowly along the road I drove

Think: Well, at least pigs are not confused by love.

 

Rod Usher

 

Five Fine Frogs

           

Five fine frogs in the swimming pool

webbed flippers on broad back feet

they tire on the surface, autumn-cool

having plopped in after insects to eat.

 

Five prisoners caught on taught green

the overhang offers them no way out

among the ablest amphibians seen

but no abseilers, can’t leap like trout.

 

One-by-one lifted out with the net

water-drunk, bulge-eyes running tears

throats apulse, not recovered yet

“Frog off!” I say. Don’t frogs have ears?

 

Touch on the smallest one’s slimy spine

and he, or she, arcs through dry air

the others loop off as though at a sign

burping about chlorine, treacherous stair.

 

Tonight by the creek, a loud jamboree

high-jumps, wooings, in Mud they trust

the five will be blithely joining the glee

songs about water, no mention of dust.

Rod Usher

 

 

 

Grace

Allowed from the millions just one,

the word to save might be grace.

Not the Amazing kind

nor Hemingway’s pressure

on the matador’s face

as bull passes pelvis.

Neither dinner table mumble

or the Memphis land of Elvis

but that reductive grace

which, with the gravity of one g,

takes all the heat from race.

 

No headlong Fall-From

Grace-and-Favour’s condescend

but a morning’s absolving smile,

at twilight, a life nearing end.

Drought-breaking rain upon roof

circles dancing out on a pond

love that demands no proof…

Certain graces which abide

without reaching for beyond.

Rod Usher