In their tennis whites, their pastel Izods, all day the women
walk down my street, their Coppertoned children
sleek as seals, trailing to the courts
and the pool.
Through my wall of loose screen I watch the neighborhood,
the mowers, the gardeners, the crew
of movers wrestling with a van of Early American.
What worries me most is this constant settling,
my dog refusing to bark at joggers, content to stalk
to the edge of the porch, whimper back
to his nap, his muscular breathing.
Sometimes for no reason, gravity seems to surge,
the house trembles and the foundation sinks
a little deeper into the lawn.
Then the Volvos crawl through the street, and neighbors
read a month of mail beside their boxes, water
the same pink rose for hours.
This is when I force myself into the yard,
when I blow through the woods bordering the pond,
kicking colonies of mushrooms, the stinkhorns,
the devil’s urns, when I make tracks and look for tracks,
following the creek with its cargo
of debris, desperate for something to praise,
something small and changing,
the delicate white maggot wagging in its cradle
of turds, the tiny feet of the tadpole, every leg
of the hornworm inching toward the wings of the phoenix
moth.
Leave a Reply