Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Visitant, Grey Sparrow Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Main Street Rag, among other publications, and more recently in The Oddville Press, Vox Poetica, Adelaide Literary Magazine and Futures Trading.

A Little Squirrel

with a little squirrel’s
cache of nuts

I save the little I make
and keep the little I save
against a rainy day

I don’t do
as the big squirrels do

go to squirrel conventions
or squirrel resorts
or the squirrel zoo

someone’s squirrel specimen
someone’s pet squirrel

and end up
a flat dab
on the asphalt

a squirrel pelt

A little squirrel
in a little squirrel’s niche
I keep to myself
I keep my cache of nuts

and afterward
grow a few more trees.