Local History

The elderly have died here, in the shade of this curtained close. My world is narrowing: small occurrences, haunt the moments; the coming and going of window shadows, the number of sparrows at my sparrow feeder. The language of significance grows louder. The dead are my neighbors, three, four, six times removed. The living fret over the mail, but the ones I barely knew, the once that have moved on, sit out front smoking cigarettes in the rain. I see them the way a mother duck counts her brood from behind her back. As regular as street signs, they appear. The passing and the past away, guide me over this small suburban patch Here at the end of the road, it feels okay to be led this way.