At First There Was Nothing

Joe Woodward

I.

And then there was something
That’s how I remember it 
Like in the first book of the Bible

Someone wanted five houses built 
Over the rabbit patch we walked through
To get to Lindo Lake Park

The two on the ends were made single story
And the three inside kneeling giants
Against the slope of the hill

We played house in their skeletons
Debbie cooked dinner and I mowed the lawn
We stared at the sky where the windows would go

On Sundays we would hide ourselves
Between the walls and door jams
Holding our breath and closing our eyes

  II.

I will send a message to the future 
I decide when I’m nine years old
In the pages of a three-ringed notebook

It’s covered in washed denim stitching
From the Woolworth’s in Parkway Plaza
Or maybe it was the TG&Y we walked to

Where Julian Avenue met Woodside Drive
In the middle of that August
You said would not end but then it did

How to Become a Veterinarian were my words
But the rest were just copied
From a pile of library books

I did have two cats and one white dove
Which I thought was a kind of pigeon
So I set it free and it never did come back

Anyway it was the How to Become part 
I was interested in and the writing it all down
As if I was sending a message to the future

  III.

From time to time I forget if      bottleneck 
Is one word or two and I lay in bed wanting
To know for sure while Michelle keeps sleeping

Then the train comes early with its headlights 
Rushing over the whiteness of the bedroom ceiling 
The horn finally waking her from a dream 

She says she was left at someone’s garden party
With nothing but dead paper whites and a green trash bag
Pulling crepe paper from a boxwood hedge

Another one I forget sometimes is    everything
As if it’s all stuck to me like hot asphalt to my tennis shoe
Walking passed the VFW Hall on my way home