the back burner

St. Elmo Avenue

Going to work
I passed a house
with sirens, lights, policemen
and paramedics.
Something was not right:
no one was urgent:
no one was talking.
Run, man! Leap past those bushes and thwart!
Run, oh! Please rush through that door and heal!
The cold, dull sense
of too late
of too bad
of detached insufficiency
curled around my belly.
I drove on.

Coming home from work
we meet again,
this house and I.
This house is grand
but hiding behind white siding
not grand when it was new,
and it is no longer new.
Upstairs a light
behind pale curtains,
out back furniture
made of green plastic,
towards the front
one solitary satellite dish
collecting signals
from a man-made moon:
these are the trappings
of a life that was ended.

Whoosh. I turn
up a familiar street and the house retreats
into rearview mirrors.
I am in a trance:
hearing violins where there are no violins,
tasting ashes where there are no ashes,
thinking someone has died,
but no one I know.
Wondering who was left behind
with the weathered siding,
the sad lamplight,
the still furniture,
the oblivious dish.