Take Out the Garbage, etc.

14 the minnesota review Burton Hatlen Take Out the Garbage, etc. Go to the bank, get cash, call the 1RS. It's your turn to cook dinner: go to the store, buy pasta, a pound of hamburger, canned tomatoes, mushrooms, a head of lettuce, bread, whatever. Be ready for at least one thing today: that 11:00 class, or the meeting at 4:00. Call the dentist. Finish something today, it doesn't much matter what: The Faerie Queene, a letter, this poem. Write your mother. Thank her for the dried apricots. Write Ron. Tell him you were sorry to hear hatlen 15 about the divorce, hope he's OK, and the kids. Read the NY Times, think about the forty peasants shot today, in El Salvador, the women moaning, the crows circling, the soldiers, tired, trudging on. Take a walk by the river. Follow a muskrat weaving its way upstream, among the rocks, ripples curling from its muzzle, heading north. Pauise by a pool where the minnows nuzzle the water's skin. Stand on the front porch, at dusk, as the last swallows swerve and sail among the trees, the lightposts. In the evening, before you go to bed, put down your book. Just sit for a while, watching 16 the minnesota review as the hands of someone you love, golden in the lamplight, comb a child's hair. ...