Carl is pacing the deck again
His cigarette ash is long.
His high-ball glass is empty.
Phyllis, caftan flowing
wild red hair a-flourish,
hollers from the dark recess of the house.
He tosses his smoke over the rail
turns to go in. Their youngest
is my basketball-boy crush.
I see his light go on upstairs
and will him to step outside
but the deck is Carl’s domain.
That grown up party house
mere feet away from our
kitchen sink. Funny, how
easy it is to tune out their
quarrels, their raucous laughter.
The livestream of their moodiness
melds with the background noise
of our Walter Cronkite News, our piano
practice, our own everyday eruptions.
Their older boy is a high school track
star. As I peer over during
dish duty I see a flash of golden hair
then he’s gone. Carl likes
German Shepherd dogs and
after one leaps the fence to
attack us during a summer
backyard sleep-out, they
keep it hooked to a long chain.
It paces the deck like Carl,
unnerved in its confinement,
seems lonely and mad. Later, I see
the animal strangling on our side,
having leaped again — and found too late
it remains one of the worst things ever.
Carl grows old over there.
Phyllis rides on floats and waves in
4th of July parades. She leaves him to stew.
I do not see their golden boy
go bad, or the trouble he takes
to the other side of town.
I do not see my basketball crush
at his window, looking out at mine.
I do not see them dancing after drinking
in the darker recesses behind the screens
or know what it is that keeps them
together. Carl owns the deck and stays.
His drink. His cigarette solitude.
He is who I see most, and hoping he
won’t notice me at the sink
watching and wondering, I keep
my eyes on the sudsy water when
he moves. I look back up when he turns away.
Early Morning Poems 