Americana Stories—Poetry

Suburban Retirement, by Mid Walsh

I

No one is living here.

Only house after house of screens
tethering the people inside elsewhere.

A lot where men
of wrecked eyes and earbuds
chuck a dumpster full
of ragged limbs of teardown.

And a lawn split by sprinklers
that hiss transparent daisies
or spit at the street,

where a solitary walker
stops as if to ask,
shall I step on a dark spot?

II

When I retired the plague struck
and everything stopped working. 

Now I sprout strange fears,
mistrust ladders, scaffolding,
three-legged stools, the cliff
at the end of sidewalks;

the fear of falling
a wake
of empty down-draft.

III

Why have I not dreamt
of the same old broken place
the rooms of tired rib, knuckle-propped,
needing my repair?

Instead I scrape the sky,
stand beside a man
as tall as towers,

our brotherhood
of architecture
where cut flowers of wind
shear by the building’s base,

and waterworks
trickle at a rock hollow
upped to speak
to passersby of interest,

and his clouded eyes
are telling me
how to know this city.

IV

Awake, I want
to walk like thunderheads
among suburban teardowns,
to listen to the dumpster
of broken mullions
vacant as old calendars
where, like rain, the rat-feet sing.

~~~