Recycling
When Dad had his easy operation
he quit smoking, cold turkey,
and Peggy and I traced and crayoned
the encyclopedia’s glossy plates.
I gave him a cardinal, a goldfinch,
a blue jay and still know those basic colors,
their cocked depictions. Today, near
blind, he’s ready to hand back over
whatever can’t be moved—some
’20s textbooks, Grandpa’s elaborate camera,
the table saw that hasn’t cut much in years and
years. And I’m trying my best to feel sad
about now but grope around another corner
instead: I see I should settle again,
start collecting for sons who, in another
thirty-five years, will need to help
clear out a house, haul away
quaint power tools, inlaid tables,
floor lamps, a love seat, an assortment
of dusty cup hooks and nails, and
several odd poems featuring birds.
“Recycling” first appeared in Oberon.
The Day I Got My Timing Down
It was in that phase of pure
sarcasm, midteens, when guys
work out an awkward stance,
work their pack’s patter
till they maybe have it. I don’t
really remember the day but
the single-moment wonder of hitting
my first come-back just right
by accident, then their free, true
laughter, my perfect follow-up,
the never-looking-back. From there
a career: from Senior Class Clown
to smooth talker in any crowd to
flip teacher spinning lit to wordsmith
chiseling chin-up come-backs
to the tin-clad sarcasms
every life dishes out as it
disarms or drops you or
leaves you hanging, slamming
its clanging locker door in your
gullible, stuttering face.
“The Day I Got My Timing Down” first appeared in Rattle.
D. R. James, retired now from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.
Sparks of Calliope 