River Oaks

The windows are full of light and dazzling mediocrities. Outside, through the windows, but also on every show on every television in a neighborhood in which there are more televisions than there are people, you find nothing but people who have so much they can’t stop crying. You yourself might also cry, for your soup has grown cold, the weather has changed and it will surely change again (and again) and what might that be across the street, near bins empty now of refuse but too heavy to blow away in the night? Near the corner, where earlier grackles sampled someone’s remains, nothing is now about to happen. Birds do not look up to see parents bribing their children. How could they, then, not hate the indifference of oaks? It is now nearly midnight and the pretensions of petty bourgeoisie settle in dark branches. Anyway, there was nothing to be done, not about the waters, for though they will not touch you they keep rising and rising and rising.