Renovations

in summer’s cold wind

winging through hollies.

Banana plants flap

like canvas sails

above a dugout cellar

where Latino boys shoulder

cans of dirt, rocks.

Three doors down

more or less . . .

things feel approximate

like my window draft haunted

by Un’aura amorosa

I’ve listened and whistled to

too much this morning

that renews me bitterly

sweet like the mug

on the pit bull

neighborhood kids adore,

recovering from surgery

while his owner Mike or Fred

three doors down

lays Italian tiles

on his rebuilt stoop.

There’s a small tremble

in the familiar orders

that keep us, that we keep,

the ocean’s big breath

through high treetops,

then lower down

a housepainter’s billowing

black nets suck and mash

above those Michoacáns

digging a duplex foundation

for New World gold:

in the pushy nonstop wind

thrown like a threshold

between us and the trench,

us and whatever’s there

underworld or overworld

where certain friends say

they will, at the end

of the things of this world,

be laid to rest,

but (I say) what rest?