Summer in Brooklyn

At this altitude the wood twists and forks

sharp and wily like a fox,

beyond my drowsy window

which I stare through, spring’s widow.

The insect screen rasterizes the picture:

Unbroken Brooklyn, impressionist rapture,

kept out with the ugly beetles and moths,

asterisk-like mosquitoes, fluttering visigoths.

Under the sibilant leaves and mulberry clusters,

koala-furred squirrels repose on the open cloister

and then all leap savagely like monkeys

exchanging branches in their little economy.

One scurries rat-faced toward the poet

and into the air duct, the dung-strewn port.

There is a noisy colony in my roomy ceiling.

Soon the squirrels will start selling

very nice views of summer in Brooklyn

the tree from which they used to look in.