Painful to sit and watch while cars
fight each other across lanes through streets
where giant trees once shaded front yards
of flower beds, stone gods and lamplights,
where wicker chairs unravel under chimes
that hang unheard above front porches railings
of neglected older homes with crumbling
Greco-Roman columns, balustrades
and Italianate cement pots,
where swings fall to one side on a single chain,
metal gliders weather to the quick,
rainbow pillows spit their stuffing,
rockers take breezes for company,
where nobody waves hello to strangers,
reads novels on verandas, writes to cousins
they haven’t seen in years, or smokes alone
in skivvies on front stoops to greet the sunrise,
where the old mutter out loud to themselves,
bend with water cans over flower beds,
knit afghans, joke too loud over hedges
in the evenings after a beer or Scotch,
where five ton trucks bang iron grates
carting loads of the soil and stones
of yesterday’s life and landmarks
to dump over cliffs into the sea