This is a poem for my neighbor, whom I watch walk through his garden every day. He lives alone. He sets up sprinklers. He trims leaves. He sits legs-out, working on something in the grass. He has a cat that sits with him. We never speak. This past summer, we put fireworks on a brick in our front driveway, and we lit them, watching showers of light rain down like meteors. For a second, we could see the sparks reflected in his windows, so we had two fireworks shows: the one we made in our own driveway, also his, in his dark house. The fireworks ended, getting fogged like those old flashbulbs on my father’s camera. You had four pictures that had light, if you were lucky. We went in, and he still sat (I typed in sad, by accident) on his grass mound, not looking over.
leafcutter ants
I give away
the end