Fill Dirt
The AC in my fifteen-year-old Tundra
with over 300,000 miles on it
just went out in late-June St. Louis
during a heat wave that’s bucking
the viscous streets and wavering
all time and space into a steamy slough.
The AC gave out as I was on my way
to the dentist to have a tooth crowned,
the second in the past year.
I hate to brag, but at my age
I’m becoming very well-connected.
I’m close friends with my urologist, dentist, and mechanic.
And I just heard from my wife that there’s real potential
for a promising friendship
with an audiologist in my future.
I can see my mechanic’s shop from the back deck.
For the past month, his sewer’s been out. Have you
ever used a porta-potty when it’s humid
enough to swim and pushing the high 90s?
Brad has. He says the Johnny on the Spot
can smell pretty rosy.
Workers dug around till they finally found the collapsed
sewer line. It was almost nineteen feet deep.
Turns out, the whole shop is sitting on fill dirt.
Brad says, They musta threw in everything to raise the lot,
old bottles, bricks, a lot of cast clay pieces from old pipes,
even found a little dirt in all the rubble. Brad grins,
Found a Coke bottle from the ’50s worth 28 bucks,
but no real treasure.
Brad’s been hunched over for the better part of a year
with his back out, using a quad cane, waiting out his insurance
for permission to have back surgery. He used to throw
tires around like toys, now he comes in a little later
in the day to take care of billing,
and lets others do the heavy lifting.
It startles me some to see him this way,
bent and getting around like that.
For a quick second, he’s a stranger. But mostly, he’s not.
He’s my age, and we’re both well-connected, familiar
friends who made it to the top
of a tell. We lay our ruin
upon other ruins: layer upon layer
of little shards of cast clay, empty Coke bottles,
slipped discs, chipped teeth,
this beater of a pickup,
a beast in need
of a little air.
© Terry Minchow-Proffitt
Terry Minchow-Proffitt lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He was raised in the rural Delta of eastern Arkansas and draws great inspiration from this region and its people. His poems have appeared in various journals and magazines. His published collections and chapbooks are Seven Last Words (2015), Chickentrain: Poems from the Arkansas Delta (2016), Sweetiebetter (2019), and Pray Tell in the Key of Blue (2024).
The Loch Raven Review 