House Calls
Ours had more than one by one doctor, James Vaught, to everyone Dr. Vaught. I never thought about all his calls to all his patients. His leather bag, a mini suitcase, a shade darker than his sandy black parted to one side hair, wire rim glasses and stethoscope were part of his presence in a room close to the street that bore our address. Then there was the office, the first floor of a house set back from trees, across from a school. He was an alcoholic was the rumor that floated ‘round. I never thought about him sitting alone at a table with a fifth and a shot glass. I remember light curtains, a ruby brown bureau and dresser, two black tubes of a stethoscope dangled tautly as Dr. Vaught leaned and listened to my mother’s heart beat in a bedroom close to the street that bore our address.
Time, the Nemesis
A Wheaten Terrier with a cropped tail and firm butt strutted a trail. Gold-blonde, the wiry yet soft coat. The haunches, curved like tops of boxing gloves, moved up and down. As one rose the other fell, all one, integral with the beating heart, the eyes’ gleam, the tongue’s dart, the muzzle’s light black beard. A living slinky toy, slinking, shear up and down time’s stairs. She became like a stick of furniture, bony, creaky, so to be hoisted. “She’s crossing over.” Then she did.
Two Neighbors
They live across from each other. The birdbath the blonde Edith stands next to comes to her waist. The Edith with dark hair and dark-rim glasses looks out her window at the woods: oaks, birches, pines call to her. The brunette Edith is closer to the woods, beyond her backyard a hill of skunk cabbage. Not one to gab or go out much the brunette is the inner Edith, her eyes elsewhere. She is closer to the river. Birds fly to the smiling, aproned, blonde Edith’s birdbath when she isn’t there.
Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table, is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.
