Puppy-dog luck


    He was the boy who followed,


    as consistent as bed time, as smart


    as well-tied laces—I did them myself.


    As certain as my shadow, keeping


    time with my latest scheme and excitement.


    I don’t remember much until later,


    when I finger the old photographs


    in a first-grade scrapbook and notice the boy,


    his head perched on my shoulder like an owl.


    He sketched his best impression of Godzilla too,


    hoping to get his depiction of the immortal


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    school mascot on that year’s shirt. That shirt hangs


    in my closet now, our two green Goliaths smiling


    through a mouth full of inky teeth. A little Michelangelo,


    painting the school


    with dogged persistence and puppy-dog luck.


    Man of the earth


    Give a boy a shovel


    and give him a noble quest,


    a reason to become one with the earth and claim


    the dirt’s simple beauties. I was determined,


    empowered, focused, precise.


    I was a boy with a shovel, digging the birth of a garden,


    the home of things that grow up.


    I was a boy with a man’s shovel, burrowing down to outer space


    when she showed up, nameless,


    blurred like a bad polaroid shot,


    walking down the street with a friend. But I was just


    a miner, an archeologist, until the friend crossed


    the boundary of the sidewalk to giggle and deliver


    —my friend thinks you’re cute.


    Who knew love at first sight


    was watching a boy dig a hole in the ground.