My Mother-In-Law's Lawn Furniture

On and off, her legacy,
she wanted a cast iron deer
and the mansion to go with it,
but she left me a daughter
that drives over things
cheerfully, without seeing them.

Lights on, or off,
she already knows every word
I know or can forage
from hundreds of pages
gleaning one more obscure,
"bathetic". I cannot expose
in my personal dictionary
scholarly pretensions,
but she knocks this over once again
flip handed, easily
while shooing simulated demons,
like pet deer run after.

-- then I feel this
this bathetic
sense of being frozen
a klutzy kitsch awkward
caught in our rough yard,
white snow, ice
a venison bred
in a cast iron bath
-- my idea to drag the tub home to park.

I'm wet hair wide eyes
caught unawares
lights on, or off.

][<en Follett