PREVIOUS TENANTS
Watching headlights as I gaze upon the ceiling
One more night gone
A friend moving south
The heat, a heartless banker
Yet one can’t afford it.
Sleep is frictionless
In the house but not of it.
Now that he’s alone
Staining his blue cotton hat
with dark continents of sweat
on scorched Sunday afternoons
He mows in a white singlet
in a back yard flat as a pitch,
the grace of an old-fashioned lawn.