From My Driveway

I live at the edge of the ghetto.
I watch the rough boys gather,
Coming to circle around the electric company’s transformer,
As many who can fit sliding atop it.
They swagger across what would be a residential street,
Holding the traffic back, secure
In their dreams of being a threat.

My home
May be in the center of this
But I live only
At the edge of the ghetto.

Beyond a certain sized group, the boys are their own
Animal. Not sleek nor swift nor even
Deadly, but with their own windsong
And grazing habits: their desire, like any
Risen animal, to mark territory, to identify tracks,
To leave behind the moment’s immediate needs.

I am merely a home owner.

The trash from the boys’ gathering blows
Lazily into my yard, and I am the
Caretaker who at the safe end of the cage
Rakes the debris into a pile,
Disposes of it no more, no less, than properly.

Of these boys
Half by decade’s end will be dead, in
Jail, or gone beyond any algebra of finding. They
Will be well into nothingness: a blight no longer able to be
Any part of this animal, or part of any animal. Muscle, fat,
Bone and digestion: all lost, undistinguished material.

I am not worried.

My neighbors, in their own hurried styles and flourishes,
Will make more boys, emitting ever a stream:
Uncaring units, accidental or planned, to ends
The units have no stake in.
Tissue dies and new tissue grows. The animal
Renews. In its sickly, unkempt,
Weathered, abandoned housecat’s life, it renews.