Mark Prudowsky – Neighbors

Neighbors

 

Each April, a black rat snake emerges from the thaw,

make its way through the fresh and green timothy grass

to an old barn and climbs a creosote pole

 

twenty feet to a swallowtail’s nest under the roof.

The young it eats quickly then stays the whole summer

and some mornings when I pass through,

 

sipping coffee, we both stop and look.

Sometimes I speak to it about the lovely

turn of the day or the shooting stars

 

I watched on my back last night,

or how poorly neighbors can be.

Though without shoulders the snake shrugs—

 

how else would neighbors be?

One of mine owns a tractor and after

a rain, he pulls a steel blade behind it,

 

re-grading the red mud and gravel snake

of the cove. One day, after a rain, I hail him.

We’re neighbors and what the hell,

 

he pulls over and I hand him some money for gas.

I say Hey, what happened with the neighbor’s dog,

the black lab? He acts dumb. So I say

 

Yeah, it was run over by the side of the road

you’re grading right now. He has shoulders

and knows how to shrug but does not know

 

remorse and his only regret is

when he turned the front tire of his black pick-up

into the dog, he’d done it in plain sight

on a lovely morning,

while, by their kitchen windows,

his neighbors sipped coffee.

 

 

 

Mark Prudowsky is an electrical contractor in North Carolina. His work has been published most recently online at “On Barcelona”, YARN, and The Great Smokies Review; and most recently in print in an anthology of poems about Chicago.