He steps onto his balcony with cigarette and mug
wearing a shirt that reads, “We can end gun violence.”
His glasses always catch the eastern sun or the white
overcast sky and when I look at him he shifts away
feigning a reflective gaze into the middle distance.
I must appear entitled sitting on my couch at 11AM
while he, wiry and eyeless, half-propped on the
rotting railing, seems sketchy to me.
Accustomed to judgment, I’ve forgotten about curiosity.
Soon the hickory between us will leaf and by the end
of May I’ll have moved up the street. Reading here
in the mornings I learn that the impact of our proto moon
likely knocked Earth into the tilt that gives us seasons.
All this time, and I never thought to ask.
