Woman with no
shoes and rag

dress, don't jump from the roof
of your three-story
apartment building,

wait until
it's on
fire.

From a straight back wooden chair, I see
a cyan-blue ceramic bowl filled with
tangerines next to a desktop radio
tuned to NPR &

out the kitchen bay window
birds bicker over seeds
overflowing a feeder,
& a raccoon scours
the earth below --

I keep in mind the fact
all of these things will
be absent from my
sight one
day.

Your mediocre dog
does not partake in birthday

parties or attend weddings,
theatrical  events

bar and bat mitzvahs
nor dabble in oil paint,

yet the pooch makes
the most out its twelve

years of life and appears
happy when compared

to the seven billion
humans on earth.

The man who sleeps in the diner's back booth
will not care  if your mother suffers  from
plantar diabetic neuropathy, or that your
cousin read **** and gulps *****.  

No,  trivial matters will not worry him
because he ****** himself dormant
after he awakens, that will be
his primary concern.

Five-thirty a.m., and I step
outside for the newspaper,

not four feet away
a raccoon sits like

a paunchy Buddha,
smiling as only

liars and sick
animals can.

I toss a half-eaten
bacon between  its  legs,

Pick up the paper,
back away.

Entangled in plastic
and  fishing line
eyes pecked by
crows; a new
America.