Big Cat Dance
In my home state of Michigan
_They rip up all the roads
To vex the heart of every man
_Who kicks against the goads.
I curse and huff and I deride
_Each time I lose a lane.
They did it on the Southbound side,
_And now the North’s the same.
Today while I was driving East
_A vision gripped my mind:
A man atop a yellow beast—
_The big, earth-moving kind.
The Caterpillar 3-3-6
_Weighs eighty-thousand pounds:
With heavy bucket, boom, and tracks
_And growly big-cat sounds.
The operator deftly moved
_To swing the boom around,
Then with his hand some stick he shoved
_To plunge the bucket down.
The track fronts begged just like a pet—
_The Cat was on rear paws.
It did a ballet pirouette
_Around the bucket jaw.
Where once was wrath I now had awe;
_I watched it spin and prance.
I won’t forget the time I saw
_Him make that big Cat dance.
Paul Erlandson resides in Royal Oak Michigan, and has recently retired from an automotive engineering career with Ford Motor Company. He has had poetry published in “Dome” (a publication of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London) and “The Slumbering Host”, a volume of poetry collected by Clinton Collister and Daniel Rattelle.
Paul, what a wonderful description and excellent rhyming poem. We seem to have the same problem of the roads always having detours for road repairs in my hometown.