Simple

[Tiger the Lion]

We dragged the canoe ashore
and smelt the car’s air freshener
differently.

Pepper roamed the woods
with a lazy tongue, collar clanging
warnings to the untrained squirrels.

Father set up our tent
in a needle bedded clearing
while I tended to the plumbing
in a hole out back.

A cliff near our camp
jutted straight from the water,
so we cooled off in the waves
of a twenty foot plunge.

Hey WJ. I really like this too. Enough to tell you that a single word choice is killing me! For a short poem you've chosen a good number of connotationally effective words: Roamed, lazy, tended, cool, plunged all have a feel of Simple or easygoing. My one nit is with "dragged". It's the poems first verb and it's too far from simple and easygoing. The rest of the trip was anything but a drag - I don't want it to start that way.   Couldn't you just "ease" the canoe ashore"

Simple poem. Well done.
Paul