We've bagged most of the leaves that finally fell
from the fig and two maples. The grass is drab
and brown, threadbare like a garment that's seen
better days. The wooden fence has the look
of waterlogged cardboard; it's starting to cave
in the middle. Along one length, mushrooms ripple
like a lace hem. The men who trim and edge the lawns
won't come again until the middle of spring.
So it's quiet as evening approaches, no sounds
of motorized whirring. When night drops its dark
dishcloth on our roofs, we pull the blinds close.
Passing cars and delivery trucks turn on the outside
lights and motion sensors, or neighbors out with their
dogs. The man who's always walked with two grey poodles,
one young and one old, passes by; but now with only one dog.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for her manuscript Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in fall 2020. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.