Late April 2023

Across the street, the Garza’s dogwood

has popped, all snowy white, like confetti

bobbling but not falling

against its background of green and brown.

Mr. Garza couldn’t know

last winter when he startled me

trudging up my driveway

after taking out the trash

in the ice-pellet dark.

“Goddammit!”

“GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!!!”

A mob of giant rats grappling?

No, Mr. Garza on his knees

fumbling bottles and cans as they clank

from a ripped garbage bag—

a gooey spill of kitchen sludge

punctuating a cacophony

of incongruously hissed curses

under that dogwood’s cold skeleton.

“…mutherfukkinsonofabitch…”

I had never, until then, heard

Mr. Garza say anything, not even hi.

But he’d wave back, and almost smile—

fat Mr. Garza, in his plaid, fur-lined

hunter’s cap and rubber galoshes

heaving out of his Hyundai

that he always backed into

his appliance cluttered garage

I guess to blast off all the faster

each morning before sunup

toward whatever hellhole

was his job.