In the Backyard
what I saw
In my childhood friend’s backyard I saw:
A bird dog pen where Bob and Jim and Joe lived.
We couldn’t pet them and they left the pen only to hunt quail.
A grassy decline where Steve pitched hard balls to me
and I tried sidearm curves on him, which he called “strike” every time.
Metal stairs that led directly from the back pantry and kitchen,
where they kept cereal boxes in the side oven door.
Another door to their unfinished basement, which smelled like the red dirt
that covered everything there, and where old tools and other oddities lay.
A rusting swing set near our baseball field, with one sliding board,
and two swings that in our innocence we took turns on, Steve, Carla, and me.
A basketball goal near the bird dog pen where they watched while we practiced jump shots, free throws, and competed in games of H.O.R.S.E.
And a shed by the alley that we were never allowed to enter,
and where once we saw the defecated remains of someone foreign to us.
People forget about backyards, and all the living and the dead things there.
The detritus of lives known and unknown; the bird dogs who never left.
