This is another poem that something
to do with a neighborhood.
It's called "Getting Ready For a Date."
"There are bad people in every culture.
One learns this from visiting museums.
That's why it's best to live on one's own street,
where the trees are familiar brides and the dogs nod,
padding off to their business.
But even here in one's own home at night,
lying awake, reviewing your education, how things
have come together, there are other elements--
the shadow of a branch on a window, some foreign student
thrown out, turned robber, standing there
for hours, filamentous, internalizing a movie he
saw about samurai raging across the world.
In their cage, the birds are jumping up and down,
pointing, trying to give warning, characters
out of Walt Disney all up on the closet shelf,
your wrinkled plastic kite.
The one that almost won the competition
rolls back and forth, a man with hemorrhoids,
a haughty Florentine painter looking for his brush
or getting ready for a date.
You get up and wander around the country of the kitchen
as if eating a dish of cold spaghetti
would make up for having forgotten to eat
the right things all week.
Then at last, bowing to lock the front door,
also remember the lawnmower sitting stiffly out
on the lawn, a lost hound, alert visitor longing
to be invited in, the mail not yet picked up,
the jeweled keys, music.
hanging in the truck's ignition."