On Ellsworth Road
Sharon comes to the edge
of the drive holding her pink-
aged micro dog, limp puff in the crook
of her arm. Toodle hoo, she says. Toodle ha!
I want to get on with my walk but
I stop to listen, and I will listen
to every word Sharon has to say
and this long hour will be a church service,
dull during but so good after. Human contact,
its invisible beauty, might be the meaningfulness
I call God. So, I bow
under the American flag slung around her listing pole,
surrounded by a kit of drought-parchmented suburban begonias,
their aprons of white pea gravel glittering in a gem way
among the evening light and I mirror
her syllables, her laughter, her soft
friendly song, even the jig.
She is the only other weird person
behind the gates of our neighborhood.
Finnish neighbors she says now, smiling, are mean.
It’s like listening to jazz.
Not annoying. A little difficult. I don’t mind
being puzzled. I like it. She likes to say the opposite
of the thing she means. (I like that, too.)
And on cue here come the Finns. They cycle past fast,
family as kite, waving, but not looking at us:
Ari, Kari, Jari and their father.
Sharon hands me the dog.
It’s a small warm purse. The eyes, blue milk,
so liquid I wonder if they even see the concrete
drive. We’re sinking here.
See the cracks in our foundations?
But Sharon isn’t worried about that.
Tonight, and every night: Who will feed the feral cats —
her front step is lined with aluminum bowls, I count
eight stations — when she dies?
I will. I will become the delirious joyous wild cat poet
of Tampa Palms. Even though I don’t like cats
or the rats who follow them like businessmen
in bold daylight — there are so many cats —
(though today what I first thought was a cat was an otter
oscillating across the dry broken backyard grass)
and I worry about diseases and bird life
just as my mother did. She squirted any cat
she saw creeping across our garden, shot him
with her hose, nozzle set on jet, murderer!
Sharon loves everything alive. I think
that’s how she has become translucent, floating
with her ancient baby-dog, just above
the lawn now, speaking of her dead
husband, always in the present tense.
Gene is not good with tools. But he’s so funny.
She is sorry she was letting the lawn die.
Dormant, I say. Not dead.
By which I mean everything, mostly us.
This is June 2, the evening after the opening day
of hurricane season. No rain since November,
the ponds and swamps crackled and dry and dead,
even the rigorous unstoppable jasmine is dying,
even the aloes and cactuses have bent down
but when it rains, at last, the streets will quickly flood,
water to our doorsteps now, well into our garages, over our pools.
I felt the drops on my face, first.
And we knelt that night, in unison,
she and I, in the first rain of the year, holding the rattling crooked dog
between us, creaking our way down to press our palms
on the pavement. We bent down to touch the droplets, miraculous
fresh dark speckles on the driveway. We looked up,
and the dog tilted back as a patient,
as the sky turned silver as a razor,
and the serious rain landed on our faces then
and then the fresh first sheets of rain
fell soft as cotton, then the thicker muscular rain,
then the shining ropes of rain, and many streams
ran down the driveway, and the road
and then the pounding.
Life is perfect
she shouted.
I yelled back
We aren’t even
getting wet!
It’s like we’re not even here! she said
and that was exactly my feeling too.