2008/culp

Little Mexican boys
shooting rubber bands
into the street,
aiming, I think,
at the birds
on the telephone
wire.
I want to warn them
of their invisibility,
in the evening shadows,
to on-coming cars.

The walking tour
outside the fence:
the house
behind you
was built
in 1898,
all the details
about Martin Luther Culp,
“and then he was
the tax collector,
got out money’s
worth in him
as a good public
servant,” or words
to that effect.

Fire victim
dinner, a $5,000
check, a blanket
with an inspirational
message from
Martin Luther –
King this time.
The kind of spiritual,
emotional insinuation
that I resent.

All serve to remind me
I am displaced,
no real place of
my own.
Heat and ants are
every where I go.

Watering the sticks
along the street
which turn out
to be crepe myrtle.

Turning over the
five grand
for the trimming
just done to
our native oaks
150-200 years old,
the arborist says.
Hacked back
and lopsided.
Brutalized without
a nod to
aesthetics, cause
that’s what it
takes, so they
can, hopefully,
heal.
Today the palm,
a 100-foot matchstick,
where the orioles
liked to nest
will be removed.
Eight hours of video tape
we made of the oriole’s
young leaving the nest,
in case they did
it while we were gone.
The bottle brush
they liked in
spring, gone
too.

6/25/08