Daily Chores are Never Done


Playing head games in his deaf seclusion
He became a stumbling boy again at 90
No rational sanity was needed to exploit
Ambiguities from jumbled memories

Farming was good preparation for the undefined
Words crossed with misleading clues
Like cows in fenced paper squares
The letters went where he put them

It was a daily chore he got up early to accomplish
Plowing up language artifacts
Digging in a dictionary for denotations
Sometimes done by noon, sometimes

Frustrating and confusing
Working all day, rearranging and erasing
Sometimes he just had to take a walk and think
Get some fresh air, check his email

Maybe there would be a new joke
Or a message from the kids
They didn’t know how much he enjoyed the smell
Of a good day in a field of make believe

Of course he never could explain
What pleasure he found in doing things right
Taking hay out of a stack or putting words in a grid
Molders winter winds into augurs of spring