1 
Sunday Walks in the Suburbs
On stones mossed with hot dust, no shade but the thin, useless 
       shadows of roadside grasses;
into the wood’s gloom, staring back at the blue flowers on
       stalks thin as threads.

The green slime—a thicket of young trees standing in brown water;
with knobs like muscles, a naked tree stretches up,
dead; and a dead duck, head sunk in the water as if diving.

The tide is out. Only a pool is left on the creek’s stinking mud.
Someone has thrown a washboiler away.
On the bank a heap of cans;
rats, covered with rust, creep in and out.
The white edges of the clouds like veining in a stone.

2
Scared dogs looking backwards with patient eyes;
at windows stooping old woman, wrapped in shawls;
old men, wrinkled as knuckles, on the stoops.

A bitch, backbone and ribs showing in the sinuous back,
sniffed for food, her swollen udder nearly rubbing along the pavement.

Once a toothless woman opened her door,
chewing a slice of bacon that hung from her mouth like a tongue.

This is where I walked night after night;
this is where I walked away many years.