Puppy-dog luck

  He was the boy who followed,

  as consistent as bed time, as smart

  as well-tied laces—I did them myself.

  As certain as my shadow, keeping

  time with my latest scheme and excitement.

  I don’t remember much until later,

  when I finger the old photographs

  in a first-grade scrapbook and notice the boy,

  his head perched on my shoulder like an owl.

  He sketched his best impression of Godzilla too,

  hoping to get his depiction of the immortal

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  school mascot on that year’s shirt. That shirt hangs

  in my closet now, our two green Goliaths smiling

  through a mouth full of inky teeth. A little Michelangelo,

  painting the school

  with dogged persistence and puppy-dog luck.

  Man of the earth

  Give a boy a shovel

  and give him a noble quest,

  a reason to become one with the earth and claim

  the dirt’s simple beauties. I was determined,

  empowered, focused, precise.

  I was a boy with a shovel, digging the birth of a garden,

  the home of things that grow up.

  I was a boy with a man’s shovel, burrowing down to outer space

  when she showed up, nameless,

  blurred like a bad polaroid shot,

  walking down the street with a friend. But I was just

  a miner, an archeologist, until the friend crossed

  the boundary of the sidewalk to giggle and deliver

  —my friend thinks you’re cute.

  Who knew love at first sight

  was watching a boy dig a hole in the ground.