#dog drafts

Camping and meeting neighbors

Coffee that can be drunk straight from the can and

Cars that carry a bed and warmth within

A forest nymph named ‘topher

Living by a shoestring and learning

All the way how to fix what was broken how to

Rise from the ashes and dust off

The bruises like we’d done before

No time for overwhelming

Because it’s time to live in the moment

Release the ties that bind you to the times that mind

You like a child

And if a child lives within your soul then you can soar

Into the clouds of fancy flouncy floral fun until

More adventures, still bigger, yet brighter flutter

Right into your lap

But I keep the doors latched.

I recognize how

Crazy my social anxiety

Can be at times.

Catch me, age 16, about to be

Overcome by a twister,

and were I, say, Dorothy,

I wouldn’t have wasted my time

At the storm cellar door

No siree,

But then look straight into my mind, examine these gears

As they turn and choose what we

Shall do. Funny thing, to see the minds machine

And see the whys and the how’s behind the whats and The Who’s.

Look there and find that I’m too terrified to intrude on those below, so I make do

With the up above.

Might even skittishly hide from sight, as if

To apologize for its existence.

Catch me in any story written by Jack London, freezing to death but not

Because a fire wouldn’t start

Simply because I was too timid

To ask a man to share a fire.

Hearth and home,

If I remember not to turn all to

I write about these drafts

The dog drafts, ja, such a name