Real Estate Blues

Four days past Christmas and the rains have come.
From my cavern of envy, I present to you Rant # 42.
My wife has each one numbered, you see.

This one concerns the barren cupboard of my life—self-pity
at how we can’t even dream of buying a parking space
in the neighborhoods where we once lived.

All the houses morphed into gargantuan mansions
while cherry trees flail their orangutan arms
to protest the encroaching concrete.

Everyone’s hustling, selling something, it seems:
even our kid brothers are now buying up homes
while we paw for room at the inn.

Down the hill from my parents’ lies a Civil War fort
and in the winter mist, I make my way there.
Near an old parking meter—an uprooted weed—

I encounter the place of privation within
and the desire to shake the meter for quarters,
ignoring the snake eyes, flashing red.
 
Scouring my brain for a consolation, I recall
the prophet with no place to lay his head,
so I sit and breathe and watch the sun squint

through an eyelid of cloud along the Potomac,
and in the quiet of the garden I see fear as it is:
chimera prancing in the setting sun.

The timber of this fort has long since decayed.
The rain washes me clean. Windows glimmer
like serene old eyes, gratitude comes strolling by:

a stranger wandering in the dew, introducing me
to his dancing-bear-of-a-dog, who polishes my hand
with a sandpaper tongue. The man explains,

“She’s got more than enough: more food, more love,
more home, more fun. Each day she eats
a chicken-and-a-half. What more could I ever ask?”