Still with those two dogs

I lay there with the two dogs,
watching them sleep on the floor
in the hallway.

The older one stretched up
and then lay down again,
and I saw the tiredness
in his scrawny legs,
and saw the scraggliness of his coat
which happens to old dogs.

I thought about him as a puppy,
how energetically he chased
my brother and me from room to room,
and we would jump up together on the big chair,
- since we were little too -
as he came rushing in.

He's really lasted a long time,
hasn't he?
Despite the way we all
ignore him a little more lately,
despite years of sleeping in hallways,
despite the advance of age,
he keeps living well.

The other dog isn't as old
and isn't as spirited.

If he didn't have
the first dog for company
(I think of them as brothers)
he wouldn't make it.

The younger dog
is fatter than I remember him
and he whimpers as I pet him.

Then I woke up
and remembered:
those dogs died
a long time ago.

But,
I guess I'm still there sometimes,
still pleased to be with those dogs,
to be just another living thing,
resting in some random spot,
not left out of the tapestry of life,
not forgotten,
bur preserved by the fleetingness
of the moment.


-Jim DuBois
May 30, 2002
Jan 22, 2014

I'm Saving Your Heart

Joshua,
playing on the couch
one day,
his head
in my lap,
reached up
and touched
my cheek.
"I'm saving your heart,"
he said.
I know,
I thought,
you really are.


-Jim DuBois
March 31, 2013

Innocence

When I was
six or seven
my friend
said "fuck",
but I had no idea
what it meant.
He told me
it was a bad word
and wouldn't tell me
what it meant
until we
got away from
my little brother,
and went to a hill
in a far corner
of his father's
cow pasture.
Then he told me
that it meant
two people kissing
when they weren't
married.


-Jim DuBois
June 23, 2012

Lying

When we were 7 or 8,
we used to piss
off the stone wall
by the street.

Jeff's father
asked him
if we did.

Jeff said no.
His father said
"that's called lying."

After that, we'd say
"I have to lie"
and go piss
off the wall.


-Jim DuBois
April 19, 2005

Bulldozing my Childhood

They are bulldozing my childhood,
burying my memories
under the foundations
of another new subdivision,
quietly making a buck,
and severing some nasty roots
to make way
for another american dream.


-Jim DuBois
1999?

Faded

I.

I never thought
those times would
become faded

Or that my voice might be
the spectre of the past
calling out,
reminding you,
reminding me,
of something…

…something indistinct
but important,
locked away in memory,
in childhood,
in these faded photographs
of who we used to be
but can never be again.



II.

I never thought
those times would
become faded,
but these photographs
tell the true story,
that we weren’t who we
thought we were,
and we still aren’t,
and it’s only by a trick
of the mind
and avoidance of the sight of our old bad
hair cuts
that we convince ourselves
that nothing’s changed.



III.

Sometimes something
indistinct can tell us
more than something precise,
because what is essential
is dynamic and can’t be captured…

…we can only be reminded of it,
and experience it anew.

We have memories and feelings
about the past
but no more moments of it.



IV.

I look out the window,
watching the grey weather
quietly drop snow onto Northampton
as I write down some thoughts
that came to me
after looking at these old pictures.

I know that one day,
this moment will also fade,
this ink will disappear and
the paper crumble.

Until then
I just want to say:

We still have time
to be who we’ve
always been.



-Jim DuBois
2005?

The Scent of my Childhood

Sometimes
I catch the scent
of my childhood,

in the swampy air
from the stream
down the hill,

in the rotting leaves
on the bike path
through the woods.

Sometimes
I catch the scent
of my childhood,

of the magic
that I had forgotten,

of the goodness
I used to know more about.


-Jim DuBois
Oct 22, 2009