The other day?

I heard some men yammerin and scratchin
an sniffin each other with words and noises
and hey hey ho ho how bout them Cowboys hearts!They were talking about bucket lists.

They didn’t know I was there (I was in a dress so I was invisible).

Well…a bucket list.  I didn’t have one.
So I wondered, I wandered, and I decided to make one!
Yaay me!  See?  I can keep up with the boys!So check this out!

Mrs. Reety-Doe has a great bucket!
It’s new, shiny, and oh wow does it sing
when her high pressure test water
shoots from that shiny raygun nozzle
and splashes its cymbalic sides and bass bottom
and then when the pressure of the water spilling in
gets so great it sings higher and higher and higher
and sounds decidedly like it hasta go poddy!!Miss Fuzzy Gyrtle, now her bucket is wood
with metal bands and soldier staves all regular
but gentle curved and carved just so,
cradling the water gurgly and gentle inside
as its contralto hums and hugs the wet contents.Ms Tidy-Hand, tho…wtf is up with that bucket!??
It’s really nuffin more than an oversize porcelain diaper pail!
Remember that sorta crazed ivory shiny dull white sheen
with the thin blue Germanic stripe around the bottom
that just comforts with its defining authority?
Thick, heavy, awkward…but so solid that dirt
just sorta gives up and leaves and when it drinks
from the hose it sounds like lederhosen in alpine
and beer steins clinking contrapuntal
to clakking autumn clogs.But my favorite was old Granny Walker’s
worn out rusty bucket filled with holes
and memories and flowers planted in each.
Half-buried and cock-eyed and full
of Black-Eyed Susans and Pansies rioting
and ready to blow that chicken coop and run
for Tidy-Hand’s oh so ordered beds
and dig their toes into her perfect compost
like tourist ladies toes in Jamaica Brown Sugar sand
and stretch out ta rest…

Oh Granny…you know sumfin the rest of us
have forgotten we ever knew, don’t you?

So yeah…I have my bucket list now, so I got that going for me!

But I think
I will just keep on hiding in my hobbit wonder
beneath the magic cloak of unnoticed and smile to myself

thinking about
those neighborhood buckets
and the containers they use
in their gardens.

Zizzzi Gloucester