MIDLIFE

Migod it's noisy this morning!
I can hear the ahhh of tires
on the tri-state, the dragonfly drone
of a Cessna scrawling overhead,
the high-pitched yips of chipmunks,
the scrabble of squirrel claws on ash bark,
morning trollops of cardinals
in the dirt and creeping charley,
the flagging moan of the diesel
drifting from the valley with the
steel clatter bouncing off houses.
How can one be so alone out here
among the overgrown lilacs,
the low-slung electric wires, the
leaning and chink-walled garages,
rusted ladders sprawling across
plastic lawn chairs, a misbegotten
apple tree stinking of ferment,
a tree so ugly even the wasps
shun its lurid juices, baskets
of bedraggled impatiens hanging
like twin iridescent squatters
condemned to life without parole,
monstrous swordleaf daisies
horning in on the neighbor's sundeck,
the slack clothesline, backyard jalopies,
rustbuckets, broken down wheelbarrows
invaded by trumpet vine, abandoned
charcoal grills upended, baring
their bent and skinny insect legs
to the sky, and, at long last,
as if to announce the end, a
single blue jay proclaims some
terrible household tragedy, as if
all tragedy were the same,
the bird bath's been tipped over,
the basset hounds are whelping in
the basement or someone finally
found the philosopher's wife dead
as a doornail dead on her lawn
in her robe and slippers, a
metaphysical mystery, she'd
been haunting the sidewalk for weeks
shouting "The darkness! The darkness!" ,
and it's not what she deserved but
it's certainly a sign of the times,
these are all auguries, predilections,
this world is an Old Richard's
almanac warning you it'll be
a hard winter, and this is what
you get for coming out here
in the first place, determined to
think of nothing in particular.