My Neighbor El
poems
- On the day you fell
- the life you lived
- and the future you wanted
- came down from the clouds
- to taste the cold hard Earth.
- The strong column of bone
- that carried your adventurous spirit
- was crushed,
- not by the fishing boats
- you once sailed in the West,
- not by the numerous hours
- you spent hunched over
- planning and printing photos
- in the dark for acclaimed
- men of New York City,
- but by mere coincidence,
- a misplaced foot perhaps
- in a life that couldn’t keep up with you.
- Still, that didn’t stop you
- from peeking over the fence
- and startling me with your big glasses
- and bigger hello one early morning.
- You bent over and snapped me
- some sprigs of lavender
- from your lovely garden.
- A housewarming gift you said
- for the new kid on the block.
- Then there were the eggs
- I wanted but couldn’t eat,
- freshly laid by your dearly loved hens.
- Their happiness became a familiar sound
- in the quiet dawn that housed our street.
- I heard yours too in the way
- you talked and tended to them
- as if they were sacred royalty.
- “They only eat organic.”
- You talked to the wildflowers too.
- You always asked them
- to come home with you
- (if they wanted to)
- and they responded every time
- with glee. They knew
- what care and joy felt like.
- Rising from my own fall,
- after all these years,
- now I know it too.