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Chicken Tracks

You’ve often corrected the grammar of my office:

the papers, chairs, even pictures on the wall.

I can picture you sweeping the butterflies

back out the window,

a new broom and clean hands,

a ready sentinel in your favorite corner.

My neighbors have recently purchased a satellite dish,

so as to keep up with your activities.

I began to suspect when the sidewalk rolled up like a map,

revealing a moist landscape decipherable only from space.

The garden caught your attention next:

exploding tomatoes were taught proper manners,

and the corn was amazed at your elocution.

It's not fair, you said, that

John Lennon had to die so young;

it makes me weep too,

into the roseate teacup you left for me.

My grandfather would have liked all of this

and those long talks we had could have moved in new directions.

But it's your ghost in the orchard now,

windrowing the fallen apples to spell out cryptic jokes

decipherable only from near-earth orbit.

I beat some dirt out of the rugs yesterday,

you’d have disapproved, I know,

But I'm planting a garden next year;

the azaleas will litany the unsolved social problems of our time

and the vegetables will recapitulate in Urdu.

Alas, the neighbors will remain unenlightened,

for the message will only be decipherable from space,

and the mice have eaten through the cable of their satellite dish.