My neighbor mows his grass at night.
Back and forth he marches, pushing his mower in tight, tidy rows.
He has a lovely sprinkler system.  
It keeps his lawn green, and growing, year round.

Also, he decorates.
For fourth of July this year, he hung a light up American flag on his garage door.
He messed up a little, and it hung upside down.  
He never did fix it, but I'm pretty sure he's much more patriotic than I am, even so.  

In October, he hung a giant, painted jack o lantern on his fence, along with a black cat.
They looked nice, friendly even.
He took it down on October 30th, and he kept his porch light off on Halloween night.

I don't remember Thanksgiving, but I'm sure there was something,
A turkey, bales of hay, pumpkins.  
Probably, he wore a Pilgrim's hat to work every day.  
I would have liked to see that.

At Christmas time, there was a light up tree that he planted in his front lawn.
Also, reindeer, those white ones with lights that move their heads up and down.
Best of all, though, he had one of those leg lamps.  Like from that movie, 'The Christmas Story'?
And it was no scaled down version like you might find at Target, let me tell you.  
No, this leg belonged to a woman  five foot seven, at the very least.
I could see it shining from his living room window every single night for a month.

My neighbor mows his grass at night.
Or sometimes at five in the morning, if that is what works best for him that day.
Two or three times a week, I hear him out there mowing.
Yes, even in January.

His wife operates the blower.  
She blows the leaves that fall off my trees and drift into her yard.
She blows them into the middle of the street, then turns, and goes into her house.

Sometimes, the two of them will sit on a bench in their yard.
That bench faces my yard, my front door.
Whenever they sit out there, they look straight ahead while they are talking.  
It FEELS like they are talking about me.

Me, and all my fallen leaves from the Red Oak that have not yet made their way into their lawn.  
Me, and my Bermuda grass that hangs over the side of the curb, crispy and brown.
That grass scares them, threatening to creep across the road and into their own landscape.
Me, and my hooligan children who turn on the water hose in the summertime.
They just let it run while they play and laugh.  
Sometimes, they squirt the cars driving by.
This drives the neighbors bonkers.

I remember when we first moved in, they brought over a casserole, and introduced themselves.
I thought, 'Oh boy, they are gonna be tough.'
And they are.  They are.