Afoot in Grays Point
Without a single peep-hole
through the crimson blare
of bougainvillea, she jogs
the empty street, voyeur
peering down private drives
through iron gates, to keep
secret watch how heavily
the freighted houses sleep
and as the day grows brighter
how cobalt blue the bins
curbside for cardboard, plastic jugs
junk mail, newsprint, and cans
how jauntily Green Meadows
Landscape Care, three palms
a freehand frieze on the panel truck
shatters the sunrise calm.
How Zephyr Hills thereafter
succeeds the mowers' pother
hiking natural spring water from
one shoulder to the other
Miami Rescue Mission
following close behind
to suck up a scuttled desk beside
a television gone blind
in which she sees reflected
a bank of cumuli
which shift as she approaches, while
a single dove nearby
tests the newly sheared
and pesticided lawn
then breasts the stuccoed wall that keeps
the golden people in.
The Long Marriage
The sweet jazz
of their college days
spools over them
where they lie
on the dark lake
of night growing
old unevenly:
the sexual thrill
of Peewee Russell's
clarinet; Jack
Teagarden's trombone
half syrup, half
sobbing slide;
Erroll Garner's
rusty hum-along
over the ivories;
and Glenn Miller's
plan going down
again before sleep
repossesses them . . .
Torschlusspanik.
Of course
the Germans have
a word for it,
the shutting of
the door,
the bowels' terror
that one will go
before
the other as
the clattering horse
hooves near.
(c) Maxine Kumin. All rights reserved.
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