Tuesday, May 9, 2017

"LAGRIMA DE ORO"....R.I.P..



                           MY IRISH SHILLELAGH

It was dark midnight, and even after,
     and the old timer (me)
         was trying to sleep
He was hearing something as if
    from afar off...or was it 
just a dream?

It seemed like somewhere off in
    the universe, shovels were 
clanking against hard soil like
    a grave was being dug
to bury something

And I was sure that in my dream
    I had heard women's voices---
talking, not laughing but intent
    on doing a job

Were they perps and evil or just
     some run-of-the-mill-conspirators
          up to no good
We'd heard all of our lives about how
   awful conspirators are

This was all going on in my own backyard
    it sounded-like and suddenly I sat
        up in my bed...BOLT UPRIGHT!
Whatever perps there were, they were
     surreptitiously trying to be clandestine
diggers

I thew on my favorite robe over my black
     Fruit-of-the-Looms, grabbed my
          Irish SHILLELAGH and tippy-toed
 to the den door and carefully parted the 
     drapes...

Oh yes! Not twenty feet away, acrost the 
    cement block fence two 
sober-faced, beautiful women were 
    carefully and seriously digging 
in their own back lawn!

My, my, I knew it was our own dear
     neighbors...but up to no-good?

I eased out onto the ice-cold patio
    cement and said: "Don't shoot,
it's only me," with what little 
    humor I could muster.

And I looked over the fence and they
    had a little flashlight and seemed 
         to be digging a small grave
    of some kind with those shovels--
        there in the frozen grass

It was in fact our neighbor and her
    daughter...and the story
came out...Ann, the daughter, coming
    home after a late shift at work
          spied this little dead cat
     lying smack-in-the-middle of
         Lagrima de Oro, two streets
    south of us

And being a girl who adored little animals
     she tho't to give this little cat
          a decent burial...thus all the
digging and scraping sounds I had heard

Somewhat humorously to break the
    tension I had said: "What the heck 
        are you girls doing...half the 
neighborhood is up---do you see all
   the lights...and you can't just
       bury dead things in your 
backyard, they might stink, eventually."

They said: "Well, this pore little cat was
    just out for a stroll down the 
        middle of Lagrima de Oro,
   minding his own business when he
     got run over by prolly a speeding
drunk."

"We have given him an appropriate name---
      'LAGRIMA DE ORO,'which means
    'TEAR OF GOLD' in Spanish."

"Tomorrow we will mark the little grave
      with an epitaph of sorts:
   'Here lies Lagrima de Oro,
        .....never meant no harm...
            ...used up his ninth life.' "
------------
As I headed back to bed, with frozen feet,
    I thought to myself, 
I need more-peaceable nights at my age...
    First, it was that screaming skunk...
and now....Lagrima de Oro.
------------
BY MIL
22 APRIL 17















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