Lilac morning atmosphere and a brick house with red shutters

and a red door to hold a peephole of a peeper

watched the passersby pass by and Oh look

this woman walked a Great Pyrenees named Gregory Barton

and Gregory Barton’s got a waddling swagger to his steps

stepping up the hill past the brick house with red shutters

in front of the woodland grove all dense and scraggly

of common ninebark amid the birches

and a house back there quiet and still and very beautiful

and an old couple of folks sitting on a couple of deck chairs

not talking and time not really passing

when so much time already went past

and the smell of pancakes and grass and old trees

and Gregory Barton did his business on the peeper’s lawn

while the peeper bore witness through the peephole

and the woman didn’t bother cleaning it up

because she didn’t know she was being peeped

and off she and Gregory Barton went to enjoy their day

when a shining new Corvette passed like a blur of yellow

driven by a kindly lady named Josephine

who worked long and hard years to earn a tidy sum and

who just received her license this past Thursday and

who recently felt desperately inclined to do a nice thing for herself

and the sound of the heavy metal of her stereos boomed

a song about murder and mayhem

as Josephine went off to enjoy her day and Look Up There

a jet flew overhead a spew of smoky contrails

that the pilot did not see for he looked forward

to a deep and vast plane of sun-filled yellow sky

atop a thin layer of green and brown and metropolitan Earth

that the peeper did not see because he was too low

and he was too distracted by the new poop on his lawn

and he stepped outside with a plastic bag over his hand

and he approached the mess with a sense of hesitation

as though he were afraid of it

and he bent down

and he picked it up

and it squished warm in his hand and

he was disgusted by it and

frankly, so was I.