Avocados

30 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW C. W. TRUESDALE AVOCADOS he has named them, his avocados, after the women he has loved: Julie, Mada, Karen, Jacqueline. stoned, he talks to them. in the morning he breathes softly along their veins into their jointures and conjunctions with his mouth and his tongue. he drives his fingers into their soil. he sprays them. he talks to them, sometimes he cries, sometimes his anger wells up around their names for loneliness. sometimes he does not like women very much. always he touches them. they flourish— never in a whole life full of avocados have I seen such spirited leafing though twice now in a dream I have seen my old horse Shorty exactly as old now as he would be after twenty years — 31 CLINTON gimpy, snow-white, tired of the hunt, and gone to that pasture rising up over that hill beyond the alfalfa and down toward Buffalo Creek. what I cannot forget— the men, the women, the poems, the animals, move in my memory, flourish like his avocados, nodding in the afternoon light and breezes high above the broadening blue Hudson and leafing. D. CLINTON QUICK SONGS YOU CAN LEARN EASY This is a little song to sing in Paradise. This is a little song to sing in Limbo. This is a little song to sing in Thirst. Open your throat a little. Someone is quickly dropping a note. Let's start singing. Someone is now singing this song. Someone is now singing this song. Someone is singing heaven. This is a little song to keep dirty dogs away. Tell us this singing story dirty dog. Tell us this singing story. Sing your dirty breath. Wheh! Such a stink! I'm tired now. ...