The Concrete Crick

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but I can not ignore what

Granny on the Beverley Hillbillies

would have called it "The concrete crick."

A 30-year-old Koi pond expanded by

An artificial creek.

A concrete trough with embedded stones

Unnatural nature

The sound of rushing water

and the whir of electric pumps

fill the air

life thrives somehow

Pilgrims arrive

dust from the air
became silt that covers
the concrete bed
like milk chocolate

tadpoles swim nervously

fluttering over crayfish that

slowly move the silt

like grumpy old men puttering

in their underwater gardens

How did the crawdads get here? I ask myself

I don't know.

The frogs, I assumed, hopped.

The Koi were purchased from a pet store.
The turtle must have walked from
the bed of the Kern River
three quarteers of a mile away.

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but since I saw the crawdads
I started watching the concrete crick
like it was streaming video.

I surf the web for info on crayfish and tadpoles.
As I watched the crayfish devour carrion,
I've started wondering about reincarnation
I've eaten lobster.
Lobsters and crawdads are arthropods
These are deep thoughts
I hate deep thinking.

The great wheel of life keeps turning.
In life one you eat an arthropod
in the next life an arthropod eats you
Some day a crawdad might feed on me
Karmically it might happen
but probably not

A butterfly lands on a
dessicated stalk of a day lillyI start to wonder
how did an insect become a kite?
Off on a tangent again.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The Concrete Crick copyright 8/25/2011 by Jamie Jacks

Tango

This dance,
as you move you can count it off
queer as clockwork
Left, right, left, pause,
all the while,
the bandeon puffs
like an ore train
climbing in the Andes

the room is humid
draped in red and black
the realm of death or
the infinite bliss
after the sweaty harmony of sex
your silk dress is slightly wrinkled
my hair still
gleaming of Brylcream and sweat
call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

jajajajaja--oh such bitter laughter
I move like an elephant on ice skates
in my magic black leather shoes
my torso rigid as the stone
of the Teatro Colon
My arms like masts
draped with the guazy gossamer
of your dress or your body

It's so hot so humid
I can't remember which is which.
I can't think straight
as the habanero melody
forces me to make my feet glide
across the milonga floor.

I hold you and I feel of the bones of
Evita's spine
being gently guided by a push
from the fingers of my right hand
out of the Duarte Crypt of Recolecta Cemetary
an into the crowded night.

This dance, this tango
I chase it
It crushes me the way an
a little girl kills a fly.

Still I return
the music as addictive as sugar
my persistence a mix of desire
and desperation

call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Tango Copyright August 24, 2011 by Jamie Jacks