The Close

I count the sparrows at my feeder, watch them come and go. The birds are a happenstance, they flicker in and out, die and return, but they themselves stay the same, only their number records a difference, creates a clock for the sun. I sup my tea. My father used to slurp tea from a saucer. People hear other lives, they imagine how we come and go. The flush of a toilet brings with it visuals as if every wall were a T.V. People have died in the close, dead neighbors, three, four, six times removed. The living wait for the mail, stay to become known, remodel a restless silence. Some sit on porches, smoking cigarettes in the rain. I see them the way a mother duck sees her brood behind her back. I'm happy to be inside this close, as if I were a life inside a life. I imagine that the sparrows will watch for me when I'm not here.