November 2020.
Dear--.
Washed out haze of nights with Saturn and Jupiter blazing like
faces distant enough to be safe.
How can they be other worlds?
I ask myself all the time without ever asking
to see my way out of darkness.
I'll tell you plainly.
A neighbor I've never seen walked out of his house
with a shotgun and shot through teachers' cars parked
at the school between us.
His house kitty-corner from mine, cats and pigeons
hunched together at the curb outside his house
all I knew of him.
Some truce between them to sit like that, fed on whatever
he, unseen, put out.
I wasn't home that morning, my neighbors
and the internet offering scraps of that hour.
The masked woman walking her dog, his voice caustic
across the open air, screaming, "Communists,
I'm gonna start the next Civil War."
He did not come for her as he said he would,
no body in the line of fire.
The bullet's path into metal and across the playground,
emptied for months, teachers sheltering in a bathroom
inside.
Over the bullhorn, the police negotiator
did her work, calm, coaxing him to walk out again.
For weeks after, the landlord hauled out garbage,
a ghost turned out on to the curb for everyone to see.
The neighbor still in custody, remote as any light I cannot
reach.
I pray then neglect my prayers for him, for the school,
for neighbors I see never or daily.
Today I walked out and saw Venus and Mercury,
those steady lights against dawn.
And I watched for them to fade, wondering.