How to Tie Your Shoes by Darrell Petska

Throw on your cap and sneakers,
grab yesterday's news and bike
fast to the wide irrigation canal
before big Sis spots you,
scoot down the weedy bank,
bracing yourself so you don't slip in,
make a newspaper boat and watch it
ride the flow till it's gone,
send another downstream,
and another and another—
pausing as a rusty pickup rattles to rest
up-canal where the grizzled ditch rider
tramps in high boots and muddy clothes
to crank a flowgate and scan the banks
where you squat like a cornered beaver,
count the clonking approach of his steps
until they halt at the lip of your perch,
manage a casual “howdy”,
clambering up the bank so he won't seem
ten feet tall, and attend his words
raspy from the smoke of a cigar
clenched in his bad teeth as he eyes
your shoestrings lolling like snakes in sunlight:
"Now looky—that won't do!"



Darrell Petska's poetry has appeared in Verse-Virtual, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Muddy River Poetry Review and widely elsewhere (see conservancies.wordpress.com). Darrell has tallied 30+ years as university editor, 40 years as a dad (six years as grandpa), and a half century as a husband. He's a Wisconsinite.