The Driveway, and: Summer House, and: All Those People

The Driveway

next door. A mother to her
children put that down, and I
said, and Did you hear what
I said? And the small voices like
flowers blown back by wind
rise up, not really music,
not words, a high pitch of shrug,
and looking away, and looking
down where the ground is
suddenly interesting. The day
is summer, passing without
any weight at all, like water
loves the hose, and stains
its dark channel.

Summer House

On the large porch, they're telling me
too bad it's cloudy, though the view
isn't ruined. They know too much.

One says, he loves it here, which
could mean any of the men on the grass,
an older one, a younger one, all

studying the slow drift
of the bocce balls: that red one
though now it's green's turn.

In the house, my son is
at the cello. He stops and starts: Bach,
not-Bach. It's almost

supper. A man comes up from the river
wiping his face with a towel.
One dog is deaf. She mistakes a voice,

wild with all the ways it isn't
what she knows. Oh Tasha, someone murmurs
and it's quiet, quiet again, just

the clink of the bocce balls
and a little Bach. If only, a woman says,
if only you were here earlier

in the week. Yeah, says another, you
could have met so-and-so. Oh summer,
which loves everything! We sit

for a moment in the dim thought
of missing whoever it was, savoring
the small misfortune.

All Those People

earnestly talking to themselves
in elevators, on bikes, or walking
any street, with dog or without. I see
their heads turn slightly. And the veil
between us thins to a world
welling up. No one's ever jubilant, talking
to himself. Take the guy in the parking lot,
arms out, pleading to a ghost.
And everything human floods over
and under. The word pity
back to pittance, something passed
in embarrassment, flashing briefly
before it drops to the dark
of a pocket.
      And those perfectly
reliable types, going to work in outfits,
at red lights, in cars, holding forth to no one,
gesturing this, then that. Or lips
barely moving on those who live lost
in themselves. Sweet. Furtive.
And my own car? I talk into the steering column
all the time. The heating vent, it knows my heart.
And windshield wipers? Old story, old story,
pathetic downbeat.
          The most ancient woman
on earth limps by. She's talking too! How peculiar
we all are. Imagine the imagination, some
old box way back in the brain, springing open at
- childhood? trees and rivers?
right and wrong? heartache? starlight? brakes
giving out, oh speeding car.... In fact,
we deserve nothing. But will this
remember-wheel, this thought-so-secret, whatever
strange-sad-thing-in-there
say something amazing? Will it
talk back? Listen. Way back. Quiet. Please.