The Little Brown Helmet
1
As I sat in the drive, still behind the wheel
After a four hour drive, she opened the passenger door.
Smiling, she handed me something that
Through exhaustion and astigmatism
Looked like a little brown helmet.
Then you whimpered, looked up at me,
Suddenly barked as if to say "I am fierce and you must know it!"
Even then, only six weeks old and four pounds,
That zealous sound and the lucent eyes behind it captured my heart.
Festooned with a red bandanna, you strutted through the kitchen
Past a mystified great yellow cat and announced to a
Heap of sorted laundry that you were home and these clothes were yours.
However, you needed no beguiling to accept as a premium transaction
Their replacement by flannel sheets on an antique oak bed
Warmed by a seething fireplace.
2
On the coldest of winter nights
Snuggled under weighty hand-made quilts,
You claimed the warmest spot of all in the crook behind my knees.
What a shock at two in the morning when a cold nose touched to my nose
Led to a hasty exit for us both out the back door into the
Frosty dampness.
All through that winter, you slept, grew, and with one
Flop ear tuned to the music of the seasons, awaited
The spring you would for the first time see.
3
In summer, there came explorations of endless
Flowers and butterflies,
Ditches and pastures.
Later, there were other summers of canoe trips,
Cat fishing,
Pond swimming, all enriched by
Little rides to town for cheeseburgers hold the pickles.
Funny how your curiosity never
Ventured toward fast cars or ribbons of highway.
Scrambles through hedges and blackberries,
Playing chase and guarding stashes of bones
Were far too time consuming.
4
Thanksgiving brought you into the oak and flanneled bed by the fireplace with pains you had never known. All hurts had been dispelled there before, but we could only cradle your head and wipe your tears. Suddenly, out the door and under the house for three days, then four and then five. We welcomed you back with pizza and meatloaf as you announced the arrival of your five to match ours. With dip net in hand, I crawled beneath the house and inched my way toward the four whiners and one yeller (who indeed turned out to be yellow!) we had for some time heard each night from under the house. You claimed the flanneled bed as yours and theirs and ours that cold night and we all snuggled beneath the warm weightiness of handmade quilts as the fire crackled and hissed.
5
Today
I look past
The moss-encrusted black walnut tree to
Quiet cedars with lazy
Branches
Drooping
To
Kiss the ground beneath them.
I gaze down,
Into their lowest tips to the
Small green
Patch of zoysia
Silently bordered by white jonquils.
I know you are safe within flannel sheets
Beside
Ragman,
Bone,
And brass-plated collar.
A snow
Begins
To drift
down
To you
From an icy
December morning
Lit by a full moon’s light.
I know I will forever miss that little brown
Helmet
In the warm crook behind my knees.
nmhill © 1998