the 100 backyard dash

(Oh, would that it were wet...)

Like an old-time country doctor, Papa Lou vaulted to town
late tuesday night, ready to perform major surgery with only
a few tools and a notepad. By dawn he had grasped the
galvanized innards of the house, peered into its lead guts
& rust-clogged valves. The click of a sprinkler head could
be heard, like an omen, from the early morning ground.

He left 30 hours later, hands dyed blue from pipe glue &
knees embossed with Calaveritas grass. In his wake the word
hero floats through the parched streets, and Nana's spirit
is smiling. Basically, he fixed a whole mess of things, & what
he couldn't fix he jerryrigged in the authentic local style.
His diagnosis, though, made us flinch. We are going to have
to call in the experts, the men with the big tools.

But for now a green garden hose bypasses the ancient, invisible,
totally essential but totally corroded line of pipe that has long lain
buried in the foot of dirt beneath our quivering old floorboards.
I'm imagining it like the tube of muscle underneath the tongue;
it makes you nervous to even think about it.

One thing though. While he was here he drank only raw milk.