Inventor

The jay streaks through the lilacs in color clash. I note down: Invent outdoor birdswing so birds drunk on berries fall off in plaid in front of my window. I file it.  After all, the pussy willow’s barely tufted— I have time. At the drain, lifting its feet, a Modigliani bird—another invention? The brook agrees so brookishly, gulping at runoff like a bear in spring, like my husband. He didn’t trust my patents: the squirrel-free gutter chain the collapsing arthritic’s cane a lever for pulling old stumps in heavy rain. But every act harbors a corresponding gadget. It is that way with God: adjusting the acorn, locking the tree. With the womb, He was clearly Italianate, the bulbous lines, the excess. I often think of Him humming Beatles songs like me, over six Mason jars of pickling— my offspring? The dog laughs. You heard it: a choke, then black gums, a frothing irony. He’s all wet from rescuing bones from the brook. He drops them in, then goes in after. The brook’s rising with bones and I’m afraid the electricity will fail. Will the dog save me with his laughing? That’s what this invention’s for: the automatic rosebush waterer, hooked to the sun and this wheel, in perpetuity. Once a pirate working on my outboard told me, Betty, better sand trickling in the hourglass than a shifting dune. Even the Sudanese plant borders of aloe against the drifts. But I like the look of roses. Oh, that’s the husband at the door, scratching. Nights his furry self stands naked before me, until the dog removes his stuffing. O bear! Only by opening the blinds do I see he’s bleeding. It’s him, not me, aching with overdue maternity. A simple drawerful of cobwebs kept for emergency does for him, self-sticking, then together we apprise the chimney, holding hands and chatting about the soot stains. That was in winter before he died, the deft air stealing all we were speaking. Yesterday a patent came for my speech retrieval unit, an unusual event, even for me, because the government usually can’t get past the drawings. And these were intricate: I had the duck by the neck, her feet in food coloring, each step inked in. It all made sense—listen to the ducks now. And just in time for the aspect— ghosts are aspects, aren’t they? Of all but speech I have memory, that one sense shy of mimicry. In the spring, now, in fact, I take the blackfly larvae off rocks in the rapids. On toast, pre-maggot, the very eggs of mortality, eating them I figure I can lure Death itself, a raccoon washing and washing in the dark, and from there, patent the trap. I’ll be rich if its works. Works, go the frogs,works, works.