99poems/quiet

The house
has a quiet
I don’t like,
a lonely silence
that tells me
no one knows
I am here.

Sound is a
bridge that
draws us in.
I hear the neighbor
call his dog
from my yard,
as he does
a hundred times
a day,
insufficient
to the task.

It reminds me
the neighbors
below do not
like me,
nor I them,
lacking appreciation,
as I do,
for dog shit
to clean up
in my yard,
and their
drunken brawls
which keep me awake
at night.

But there is none
of that now,
just my small
radio on the
desk, playing
the tape
I have already
heard
too many times.

6/26/99