September 2017
Alan Walowitz
ajwal328@gmail.com
ajwal328@gmail.com
My next-door neighbors, Millie and John Mauro, moved last week. They had lived in their house for forty years and were already neighborhood veterans when they welcomed us twenty years ago. I was surprised how wrenching I found their moving to be; having good neighbors is a very underrated part of a good life. I'm still a little shaken, but now have this poem to share with them and with myself. For more, see my website: alanwalowitz.com. (I had to outbid the other Alan Walowitz for this domain name which was in incredible demand!)
Moving Day
She finishes the sweeping in front of the house
and moves on to the side. There the hose is in the way,
wound and wound in uneasy arcs on the cement path,
from just before when her husband—tired now and in to rest—
had been using it in the way of the suburbs,
powering into the street the smaller debris—cigarette ash,
blades of grass from a final cutting,
and Polly Noses from the old maple which leans now,
so many years later, out over the path.
When dry they tend to stick to the walk,
even clean as she works to keep it,
though it shouldn’t much matter moving day.
In fact, I note to her, from my own driveway
next door where I’m trying not to watch too close,
but afraid I’ll never see this scene again:
Millie, it's pretty damn clean.
Alan, I know. It’s just . . . and her voice trails off.
Last thing I mean is to discourage her
and she goes to the back, now dragging her broom,
leans against the gate, sighs, as she looks at the place
her kids and neighbor-kids and grandkids played.
There had been a swing set, screams of joy
and sometimes pain, a plastic pool, grass
now covered over in concrete, less to maintain,
and says, only partly to me, turning to go,
I guess it’s clean enough. For now.
First appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily
Moving Day
She finishes the sweeping in front of the house
and moves on to the side. There the hose is in the way,
wound and wound in uneasy arcs on the cement path,
from just before when her husband—tired now and in to rest—
had been using it in the way of the suburbs,
powering into the street the smaller debris—cigarette ash,
blades of grass from a final cutting,
and Polly Noses from the old maple which leans now,
so many years later, out over the path.
When dry they tend to stick to the walk,
even clean as she works to keep it,
though it shouldn’t much matter moving day.
In fact, I note to her, from my own driveway
next door where I’m trying not to watch too close,
but afraid I’ll never see this scene again:
Millie, it's pretty damn clean.
Alan, I know. It’s just . . . and her voice trails off.
Last thing I mean is to discourage her
and she goes to the back, now dragging her broom,
leans against the gate, sighs, as she looks at the place
her kids and neighbor-kids and grandkids played.
There had been a swing set, screams of joy
and sometimes pain, a plastic pool, grass
now covered over in concrete, less to maintain,
and says, only partly to me, turning to go,
I guess it’s clean enough. For now.
First appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily
© 2017 Alan Walowitz
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