Poetry Sample: Through the Window

Through the Window

The neighbor’s house squats
under a magnolia tree. In May the tree blooms
then drops rosy bits of satin on the roof,
creating white polka dots on the shingles.

The porch twists all around.
There Joel learned to rollerblade,
holding the railing,
round and round.
I watched him take a lot of bruises,
tough kid.
So did the porch.
Now the gouged wood bears vertical stripes.
One board winces under weight.

Some landmarks are oversized. The driveway, perpetually graffettied with chalk,
is twice as long as most.
The triple oak tree —I’ve never seen larger—spills so many acorns
that walking on them is like sliding on ball-bearings.
Their mailbox is so large that once a prankster
squeezed two middlin’ pumpkins into it.

In the backyard the two boys and Molly make a racket,
sometimes as Indians. But what Indians!
Hair spiked with water, finger-painted faces, cardboard tomahawks.
They remind me of my brothers and our adventures
long ago.

Everyone hates the house’s color: muddy purple.
About once a year someone suggests changing the siding.
Nothing comes of it.
Teenage Carl, who won a prize for carving those pumpkins,
invited me in once. The wallpaper inside is uglier than the siding.
I was only in that once.

Kids move too fast for old bones and keep parents busy,
busier than I all alone.
Collecting clues from across the street mystifies
yet rewards. They are my soap opera,
each episode new growth and adventures.

I saw when Molly fell from the magnolia tree
cracked a wrist, hardly cried.
Joel didn’t know I was watching the first time
he rollerbladed on the sidewalk arms churning, leaning forward.
I missed Carl the first autumn that he couldn’t slide on the acorns.
College had claimed him.
I saw Joel show his mother his new baby.
I’ll watch too when that baby learns to walk by holding on to the porch railings.