Weber and Theories of the Leisure Grill

Home Depot and myself are mutual enemies sworn to eternal opposition. Still Saturday I infiltrated past its front check-out lines and found myself in hostile territory. But I needed to buy a Weber charcoal grill so what’s a man to do. It had been more than a dozen years since I owned one, before someone wanted the gas kind and so gone were the days of charcoals, lighter fluid, and cans of beer. Not any more, he smiled.

The Day Before Father’s Day

Inside Home Depot weather patterns chose
their gadgetry and whatever thingamabob
above that holy ground, before I found
my Weber grill. It was an inside job
the clerk informed me: he was married once
his wife reminded him. But she had died
and he was free to cook with charcoal paints
instead of all the fuel she prophesied.
We laughed the laugh of prehistoric men
remembering our arguments with rust,
before the gods revealed the iron age—
even stainless steel will turn to dust
and homes are just blue metal use for wood.
They lit the barbeque and it was good.

Gregory Perry 2004

But living in an apartment complex is not all that conducive to barbeques, at least for me. So I’m keeping it at Beverly’s where she is keeping a loving eye on it. (Revisions to the poem, if any, will be here.)