Imagining My Neighbor
By Loretta Diane Walker
Now that night has fallen like a broken cart,
he cups his ear against the old red radio,
attempting to tune out the stream
of unintelligible street verbiage
leaking thru the window.
Earlier, he opened all the blinds,
but left the front door closed.
Why do we seal off those places
flooding the greater light?
I imagine in the quiet cottage of his brain
the sepia of this desert city,
wind, dirt, grit that scuffs your skin.
Wish him gentleness in the shade of shadows.
We spoke once. “This heat. Too much,” he tells me.
His birth city is a place where the Pacific baptizes
each morning with softness, the smell of seaweed.
Each day predictable as a calendar.
Today he is a leopard lizard
stalking his oppressor for that which is too much.
I shut blinds. Retreat from voyeurism.
I have no heat or words to offer him.
I am a wheel that does not move the cart.
--------
Monday started chilly but turned into a gorgeous day in the 70s. I spent much of it doing packing-related chores and laundry, but in the afternoon we decided that we should go walk around the neighborhood near ours with lots of cherry blossoms before they were all gone. The trees had as much green as pink and white, but it was still beautiful, and there are still plenty of daffodils plus coming hyacinths and tulips. I ran into my friend who lives in that neighborhood whom I have now run into three years in a row with her dog while seeing the trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment