poems by owen lucas

Mild grey front lawn, the creak
of peeling shutters, cawing crows, and
the whisper of leaves on a slow
afternoon. Fuschias hang from baskets under
the eave of the porch, pink flamingo
beaks declining from between the leaves,
raw syrup accruing inside for the
hummingbirds to stab at as they hang
before the shaded front windows.

Dull green rocking chairs, a pair, sit in a
wooden monogamy on the decking, right
by the glass, paint and gilt edge of a fine
front door. Kathleen lounges in polka-
dot blue and white on the blanket
she brought out, kicking her heels up
behind the knees lying on her stomach
like movie starlet in the 50s, on the phone
nonchalant to her sister in Philadelphia.

Now she gets up, dreamy, and dawdles
her way to the porch swinging one hand
by her side, paces the boards slowly
like a white shingled catwalk still
chatting and fiddling sometimes with
the flowers, blue dress blue as the pool
bubbling chlorine behind the picket fence.

The lawn is clover all over, dry and thinly
carpeted with shy white flowers, bees
pecking at their stems and buzzing clumsy
quiet down into the loamy underneath,
down where ants battle to the death.