19 Lake Street

Chase Twichell (1981)

At last the maples
throw off their soft red buds,
and the neighbors emerge
to scrape the lawns.
New mothers wheel their offspring
up and down over the curbs,
absorbed by the awkwardness.
And which of all the elements
is the strangest?
The little spirits struggling
in their yellow blankets,
the huge trees falling to pieces?
The dismantled, oily parts
of a machine laid out on rags
like a metal picnic?
A curtain shivers. Someone is watching
the tulips enlarge in the gardens.
They force their closed,
still colorless flowers
up out of the bare dirt.