Close To The Edge Played In The Background

After the TV broke
and the odd monsoon arrived
I watched rain showers
float items down the street.

Pink plastic cup.
Stripped Barbie doll.
A torn love song.
And my neighbor’s melancholy.

When the rain stopped,
I turned to watch the cholla
swell before my eyes
though that is a trick of imagination.

All the Gold- and Rosefinches
returned to the damp nyjer seed
and jousted for landing
on the feeder’s mesh wall.

A dark-eyed Junco
with white tail feathers
got nicknamed
Tongue Depressor.

Tonight, I will tell my beloved
about an endangered species:
the Yellow Taxi I saw
returning neighbors home

from the holiday made longer
by mandated quarantines
and widely differing political views
constricted by No Shouting rules.

postscript

For those of you who do not know Close to the Edge is a song by the rock group Yes. Here is a link to a YouTube playing of the song. Wikipedia has an entry on the song as well.

Confession: the poem is not about the song or any of its ascribed meanings, but is in the title because it was an ear-worm while writing this poem.

Rocky Road

My cereal bowl
was shaped from a TV’s flat screen.

This translucent bowl
displays newspaper headlines and video clips.

Only the news. The real news.
It edits out the gossip and fake stuff for me.

I have sugar-coated the news through my cereal
almost every day.

It is odd reading the news
through milk, Captain Crunch and papaya pieces.

When I use my cereal bowl for ice cream
Rachel Maddow comes on.

My parents left the house.
They left me alone.

I am less alone than when they are present.
I will be less alone for ten days.

The dog is asleep.
We walked seven miles.

We walked that distance as a delaying tactic
so my parents would be gone

by the time the dog and I
returned to the house.

The dog gives little woofs
through her sleep.

The TV plays without sound
so the dog may sleep

with her head on my thigh
on the couch were she is forbidden.

My mind rotates through subjects
just as the TV slow motion baseball rotates

on its way to home plate
to complete its part of the pitch.

A squirrel looks in from the window.
It presses paws to glass.

It knows this is the spot
where my parents place peanuts to attract it.

This spot is adjacent to the door
that allows the dog into the yard.

When the squirrel sees I do not move
it jumps on to the bird feeder

and knocks its willy-nilly
so seed scatters on to patio stones.

The squirrel scoops up the seed.
The TV shortstop scoops up a ground ball.

A double play is turned to end the inning.
The dog repositions her sleeping head.