Low-Density Residential

I am trying to accept this place
for what it is,
with its screeching toddlers
and indiscriminate,
nighttime artillery drills,
its speeding mini-vans
and ATVs that run the roads,
kicking fine plumes
of dust fifteen feet into the air.

I balance this suburban unrest
with the mosaic of sun-glossed
oak leaves outside my bedroom
window, and with the mergansers
that nested on the shores of the
shallow lake at the end of our lane
this summer.

Away

Bay-side that first morning,
I woke and kissed salt-air,
celebrated the absence of sound
with champagne and juice,
mused for close to an hour over
the mystifying, spiny pink flowers
tumbling over the garden gate.

Neighbors

I hear the chuffling cough of the sheltie
that lives on the corner of Victoria,
and, moments later, the echoing boom
of the Mastiff-mix from behind the red
stockade fence next door. I learned their
names before I learned the neighbors’.

With time, I learned soil names as well.
Buxton silt loam, Hollis-complex.
Hosta and astilbe grow well here.
In the backyard, lamia spreads
like a silver pool, conceals
the once-gaping gumline of the house.

I make a border of tulips and narcissi,
hopeful that next spring, I won’t be here
to see it come up.

Early July

How far away the grass-thatched dunes
and salmon-colored bluffs of the Cape
seem today. The sea is a closed blue door
I stumble toward, cloud-blind.