Bark Chip Artist

It's 5:30 in the morning.

A purple and orange outline

of Mt. Hood forms in the eastern sky.

A planet's up there, too,

but I can't name it.

I learned nothing useful

in junior high science.

Worm dissections and

petri dish molds.

Never one lesson

about watersheds.

I walk Elmer the maniacal husky through the park.

Time for another encounter

with the homeless.

Perhaps walk into

an arresting image

to inspire a poem.

We pass a young homeless

man smoking a cigarette

and fiddling on his phone.

I say good morning.

He doesn't look up.

No poem there.

Fifty yards later,

a homeless man approaches.

He walks crooked and shuffling.

We meet.

I say good morning.

He grunts something

in return

I don't catch it

but I think it

sounded cordial.

Nothing like a cordial grunt

for a greeting.

Possible poem there.

We cross the bridge

where below the old beaver lurks.

A can of Coors

rests on a rail.

I see a homeless man

carrying a bag of cans and bottles

across the street.

I call out to him about the can.

He says, thank you

and crosses the street.

No poem there.

But possible greeting card.

Geese honk overhead.

Freight trains lurch and decouple.

Elmer and I keep moving.

We hit the bark chip path,

lit up by lampposts,

and pass the

split oak

and fallen cedar.

Down the path

I see a homeless man

meander.

He stops and

scratches out something

in the bark chips

with his right foot.

He's designing something.

He's not scraping

dog shit of his shoes.

Art is happening!

Maybe a haiku!

I've got to see what he's creating!

The man turns right

and disappears across a bridge.

Elmer and I move forward.

I stop and behold the artist's design:

It's giant penis with testicles.

It's ejaculating!

Definitely got a poem here.