God Laughed
Contrary to the evidence,
I put out the laundry
   filling the outdoor lines
     with shirts, socks, pants and panties, jeans and more.
In the distance
  there was thunder
    (as there had been most of the afternoon)
  which I gave no notice to
  before heading in to start a load of whites.
In the distance
  there was now lightning.
Again I took no notice
  (it had lightninged earlier, too);
I sat down to wait for the clothes to dry,
  the whites to wash.
Then the rain came:
  're-washing' our clothes
      washing gravel down the driveway
         and kicking my over confidence in the shins.

Struggling
I admit it: I'm struggling to fill this space. It's not that I can't say SOMETHING, it's that it's not interesting. To me. I know that that is the egoist in me wanting to satisfy himself, not his readers. On the other hand, I started writing this for me, not for others. Yet, the blog is now more than six months old (by a few days) and if I haven't run out of something to say much of it seems repetitious.

So, I'll continue to write. Continue the struggle.Because, let's face it, writing is a struggle. Sometimes the struggle is to find material, sometimes to find one word that will make something "perfect," sometimes to get the grammar and mechanics right and then sometimes (I didn't even know this problem existed) the problem is how to avoid sameness over a prolonged period of time.

I'll keep writing.

Please keep reading, and tell me how I'm doing.

Bill McCann

Factory Work
Wait
   for
     the
       part
         to
           drop.
Pick it up.
    Trim it.
    Stack it.
    Count it.
Wait for the next part.
Do this
    over
      and
        over.
Again.
and
Again
Come back the next day.
And do it for another eight hours.

Storm
Lightning
fills the window
   illuminating the wide outside
     and the intimate spaces
        of our bedroom.
Then the light is gone
   and all is dark.
Just for a moment.
Only until the next boom of thunder,
   the next burst of light
to be followed by
incessant
needed
rain.

Bright Lights
Under summer stars
   and stage lights
     a gem shines
in Danville:
Pioneer Playhouse.
Having given rise in decades past
  to stars of stage and screen--
Lee Majors, John Travolta and Jim Varney--
Recent years have seen
  playwrights ascendent:
     Liz Orendorf, Charles Edward Pogue
        and Robbie Henson,
whose father Eben put up the first
stage lights and dreamed of combining
bright lights
and stage lights
in Danville.

Foggy Morning
The house is shrouded in fog.
I can see only as far as the cloud allows.
Yet, I hear frogs croaking
   and birds chirping.
Soon the sun will come out,
melt off the fog
and give back the views,
as well as the sounds, that are
Roxford.

Sunset

Dangerous Roads
     Many are
     the roads
     in Harriso
     n County t
     hat if you
    don't stay
    between
   the white lines
you end up pushing
up daisies somewhere

Mowing
With each push of the mower
   each path made around the house
the 'jungle' that would otherwise
   surround us with its field mice, snakes
      and other critters recedes,
just a bit, leaving
a little bit of suburbia
in the field of dreams we call,
Roxford. 

This Morning
At dawn the symphony began:
  tweets and trills
     caws calling
        sound and response
from trees and grass and air.
I love the sounds of
early morning 
    in the country.

Fishing
For Fathers at Father's Day

Took my youngest fishing
   on the Licking.
We set in at Cynthiana's boat ramp
   floating along and talking some,
but mostly
   him casting and me untangling messes--
       pulling up alongside
trees and bushes
    to get hooks and find lures.
Finally,
    at the end of the day,
he hooked into a BIG one
it fought him all the way to the boat.
When he finally pulled it in
    we found a boot.
Being a good environmentalist I told my son,
    we'll pour out the water
    and keep the boot.
Why?
So we can help keep our river clean.
But won't it just go in a landfill?
Yes.
What's the point?
He had me there. But I still poured out the boot's water,
    and with it the only fish we'd caught all day.

Goldfish
Fishing along River Road:
calm beautiful summer day
the fish are biting.
Baseball game noises drift over to my boat
reminding me of what I'd be doing today
    if I, or my son, were still twelve.
Road noise.
A plane flies overhead--
  Cincinnati International is not far away.
Suddenly,
I hear a splash!
Looking at the river,
   everything seems to be the same.
I don't know why
  but I look into the minnow bucket:
a dead goldfish
  is floating amid the bait.
Now how did that get there?

Clouds: A Conversation
On their backs,
looking up.
How cool, Daddy.
What?
All the different shapes. There's an orange.
Oh, yeah. But this is Kentucky.
A basketball then?
Yeah.
There's an orca.
Okra? You like your Mommie's fried okra better, or Gramma's?
Orca. Like a whale, Daddy.
Oh. Where'd you learn about whales?
Sunday School. Jonah got swallowed by one.
Oh, yeah.
There's a tree.
And a ship.
Where?
Over there.
Oh yeah.
Dinner, boys!
I'm hungry enough to eat a whale!
Me, too, Daddy. Me too.

Mud Puddles
After a long dry spell,
   as we've just come through,
 mud puddles are evidence
   that rain has come
and stayed a bit.

Rainy Day
I play in the rain
  until I'm soaked to the skin.
Then I go inside
  and begin my day,
again.

Flock of Butterflies?
They swarmed
but were much too large
   to be butterflies.
Bright yellow and black
   they flew out of the locust trees
and quickly scattered:
   male goldfinches, I realized
only after they had gone.

Rain
At last!
The sky is a mottled,
    rather ugly looking gray.
But the rain falling from those clouds
    is beautiful!

Boy or Girl?
The sun rose in a sky
that was an equal mixture of pink and blue clouds
   as if God could not decide today
      whether He wanted a boy world
or a girl world.
So he gave us fraternal twins?

Snake Dance
Halli barks at a rock
   she barks boldly
then retreats
   over and over.
Suddenly the barking changes
   the retreats become longer
Ah, there's the reason:
a rat snake coiled three menacing feet high
hissing and striking back.
Jeanine
retrieves the unwilling Halli
and pulls and  carries her into the house
where a whimpering barking Halligan
seems to say,
"Let me at 'im, let me at 'im. I'm king of the jungle,
let me at 'm."

Halli the Herpetologist

Today Halli unearthed a six-foot rat snake from underneath the downspout by the back door. It was curled into a multi-curved S and striking at her when I caught her and carried her into the house. Now she's running from door to window to door, whining and yelping and yodeling, wanting to get outside.

This is her third snake, and every one she finds is bigger than the last.

Halligan the Wonder Dog

In case you were wondering about Halli, she's the biggest goofball on earth. Here's proof, in case you find Bill's poems a bit far-fetched:

She likes to play in the spray from the hose while I'm trying to water my plants. Leaping around like a complete derp, she bites and snaps at the water, ending up completely soaked.

This is the same dog who panics when it rains--let one drop of rain hit her and she is banging on the back door: Mom...Mom! MOM! It's raining, Mom! Lemme in, lemme INNNN! Mom! Mommy! I'm gonna melt, I'm melting! MOMMMM!!

The other day I got distracted by her antics and fished out my phone. Set on "multi-shot," I probably took 50 photos of her bouncing around, and here are the best ones. It's not easy to photograph a moving target when you're trying to spray a hose with one hand and not drench your camera.

All Bill's poems are true. She does steal clothes off the line. She does corner snakes under rocks. She does chase turkeys, and is amazed when they fly away.

You definitely can't say she's unhappy--being a rescue dog pretty much guarantees that a dog will appreciate living the good life in a home instead of a shelter, and her story is one of early abuse and neglect. But now? Pure joy.

Wash Day
The jeans came down
    off the clothesline
because Halli pulled them down.
Then she ran around the yard
   with me in hot pursuit
       trying to get my pants back.
I'm glad that Jeanine didn't have
   her phone's video camera going
      or I might have soon been watching Halli and I
on America's Funniest Home Videos.

Summer Sky
Thunder can be heard in the distance
        lightening streaks brighten the far horizon
But not a drop of rain for the tomatoes.

Are You an Ant?
The ant strode across the vast expanse
    of the white toilet bowl cover
and just as it was about the claim it
    for all 'antdom'-- or perhaps Pixar--
the hand of God
    (two fingers clothed in two squares of toilet paper)
reached out, grabbed the ant, and tossed it into the toilet.
Shortly afterwards
the toilet was flushed
and our hero sent swirling down the pipes
and into the nearby lagoon.
Once there
the ant crawled out of the toilet paper
and onto dry land.
Life continues for our hero,
in a different world.