Next door

Sleeping Spoons

Unenthusiastically,

the woman with the long straight hair

is watering her porch plants this evening

with a white plastic can.

Isn’t she edging toward spinsterhood?

I watch as she moves around on her sore feet.

She bought the house 8 years ago,

our fat new neighbor, and introduced herself;

we soon uncovered her

when, upon leaving alone on a vacation cruise,

she asked us to enter her house,

walk up her stairs,

past the soiled laundry on her bedroom floor,

into her humid, randy bathroom

to feed her emaciated cats.

Now she lumbers with the watering can as if riding,

laboriously, on waves of pine planks.

She looks down—do her eyebrows knit?—

at two plastic chairs, faded and weather-eaten,

adorning the porch, sleeping spoons.