After the damned thing blew

I went out on my front porch

And stared, morose, as grey, spiritless,

As these ash-coated surroundings I had

Once thought of as my neighborhood.


Grey. Corpse-grey. A smothering layer

Choking every surface, worming

Like some fibrous silicate into

Every crevice


And cutting off the affection I had

Come to feel for the place, like

An organism deprived of oxygen


Is squeezed of life.

I’ll have to leave, my overriding
thought.

I’ll have to leave. I like it here: the
house, the town,

But I can’t live like this—


And old Winnie, my old mongrel, nosed

Her way out the screen door

And sniffed around, then whined in

Protest at my heels. So, breathing


Through a handkerchief, I went to the
side

Yard and brought back the hose

And throttled the nozzle on full,


Blasting a spray out from my feet

And onto the steps, then down

The sidewalk, then out to clear

A space for Winnie to sniff and circle

And pee in,


2.


And the space did clear,

And the widening circumference

Radiated green, green as the greenest
lucky

Shamrock ever imagined on the


Wettest, most stout-soaked

St. Paddy’s Day ever experienced.


And Winnie circled and went

About her business and was happy.


And I stood there on my

Porch, hose in hand, spray

Cranked on full,


Coloring-in the shrubs and the trees

And the rest of the porch

And house and created the neighborhood


Once again, in broad strokes

Across that grey canvas


And I, too, felt something

like happiness.