Somewhere, someone watches a Mexican woman,

too big for her jet-tight poly-rayon dress,

 

gyrate against a lamppost,

though no one else in the barrio

 

seems to notice.  Here, deer periodically

punctuate the brush behind the house,

 

and occasionally go too far in their flamboyant

voyages, so that sometimes from the redwood

 

deck I see the wet nose of a whitetail,

generally a baby, poking through a gap

 

made by a sapling.  How gay.  Joyous.

How gravely deprave. A Labrador goes berserk

 

one block down.  He hears but he

cannot shake loose. From where I sit, I am pope.

 

The dogs bark up at the moon.  The Mexican

woman jiggles, gasoline rainbow in a black puddle.

 

The deer eat the tomatoes.  Crickets make

speakers of the sycamores.  Neighbors

 

unplug their lemon-string lights.  A car

drives by, thumping bass.  I drain my

 

Ranger.  Love at the Bottom of the Sea

Ends.

 

 

Photo By: Dave Owen