Yes, yes, I’ll get to the taking out the trash bit. But first, I have to toot my horn just a little for my superior technical compu-skills.

See, I had a TON of documents and invoice templates and pdf’s and ebooks and probably the very first essay I ever wrote, all hanging about, gathering cyberdust on the office computer. And as you know (since you follow along here at the Hall of Fame), I work on Precious the Laptop now, far away from the office where the Beneficent Mr. Hall resides (when he’s not taking his afternoon siesta).

Back in January (give or take a year), I had the presence of mind to zip all that stuff on to one of those zippy flash drives. And as fate would have it, I found that flash drive today (!) while waiting 35 minutes for the office computer to do its thing (P.S. It never quite did its thing.) Long story short, everything is now safely tucked away on Precious the Laptop (Okay, yes. The Beneficent Mr. Hall may have made a few suggestions as to how this delicate compu-feat could be accomplished. But I pressed the buttons.) So, ta-daaaaa! There really is no telling what scathingly brilliant stuff I might dig up, dust off, and send out.

Just like “Taking Out the Trash.” That’s the poem I mentioned a month or so ago here. The one I reworked several times, until finally I won the Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award in the 2011 North Carolina Poetry Society’s Competition. I received a lovely book called Pinesong where all the award-winning poems are published, and a lovely certificate and a very lovely check. So I think it’s okay to share the poem (which I found on my zippy flash drive. So there really was a point to that first bit of the post).

Taking Out the Trash

It was just ‘round the time when kids fall asleep,
And fathers plop down in soft chairs.
With dishwashers running, and TVs a-humming,
As mothers tread soft on the stairs.

“Did you take out the trash?” she asked with a smile,
She doubted he’d gotten right to it.
“Ten minutes,” he said, never turning his head.
Why rush around now and do it?

She picked up the gym clothes, the games and the books.
She put everything back in its place.
He sprawled on his seat, with his two propped-up feet,
A look of sheer bliss on his face.

She packed all the lunches, wrote checks, stamped the bills,
Fed the dog, even cleaned the fish bowl.
He cheered on his team, with a whoop and a scream.
“The trash, please!” she begged. His eyes rolled.

“Okay,” he replied to the tone in her voice,
With a sidelong glance at the mother.
“I can never relax,” he said, stating the facts.
“It’s just one thing after another!”