The man in a junkyard car creeping house to house
already knows what the tall, slatted fences
of their shallow backyards conceal:
Swing sets with plastic slides, colorful kick balls,
overturned trikes, hula hoops, a lost sandal,
a dog, head between paws, ears down on sparse grass
With the children at school, it’s quiet back there
Realtors writing Sunday classifieds call these places
“starter homes,” “peaches,” “cuties,” meaning small, old,
with cracked and leaking foundations, wood siding
in need of paint, new gutters, lawns calling for grass,
aging stone porches with balustrades where newlyweds
hold hands in the dark, drink too much and argue,
where the sound of unnamed voices from the angst
of dilapidated kitchens crisscross the air with words
flung back and forth through blackened screens that
can’t send them back
What the rooflines don’t shed the trees provide: leaves,
leaves of all sizes, portfolios and illuminations,
leaves that flutter and spin, that whisper and cool night,
that lull, that settle peacefully just before dawn
The man inching his battered car under aged trees before
the afternoon’s cumulous clouds have risen savors
each potted plant, smiling, swallowing grief, while above
and all about him, limb from limb, young squirrels leap
and birds go courting
Past his old address, he slowly turns a corner and heads
for a church that’s serving hamburger mac and cheese today,
the one dinner he knew how to fix before she took the kids
and moved away to a larger house with another man
in a distant state where they say it’s always summer
and rarely, if ever, rains or snows