cagean: i have few things to say, & i am saying them

i have nothing to say


and i am saying it--


--john cage


***


i had a dogwood tree in the back yard when i was a little girl in virgina.


what tree did you have


when you were a little girl?


today was a dog, dog day.


thank dog it's night now.  cooler, more hopeful, somehow.


Dogwood
BY WILLIAM JOHNSON

Dog days doggone dog-tired dogwork of summer,

mowing the grass we're all coming to

the dog tags of you, me, I, we, stashed in a box,

doghouse throwaways. Even the namesake

tree whose blossoms some call Jesus-flowers

for the rust-grooved tips of the petals

as if nails now removed had indented

the shape of a cross, betrays my mood

how all those springs ago

seeing our tree nailed with bloody after bloody

crucifix I said this beauty's no foo-foo

and sure enough my dog-weary dearie

mowing today, the spring long gone,

I brush a limb on whose tired leaves mites amble

the edible thoroughfares and as if to confirm it,

our neighbor's mutt runs along the fence yapping

dogwood dogwood dogwood as the mower chugs on,

our train leaving for the city beneath the grass.