No One to Admire Here

How much do you like to find
A person you can admire?
Could that possibly predict

How often you engage or
Disengage with politics?
Enough of this. Here we sit,

Fools in a rented backyard
Boxed on three sides by a wall
Of dusty red cinderblock,

The renter and the black cat,
Each with compulsions to track.
The renter watches bird thoughts,

While the cat hunts for lizards
That race away like smart toys
Designed to tempt cats to play,

And the day’s news plays in loops
Through the invisible waves
That pass through the waves we’re here,

Whether we tune into them,
Whether we understand them,
Whether we care in the least

About their relentless games
That get tangled in our hair.
You can only take our word

For this. You can only steal
Back our words, these words we stole
From the ghosts they are, stealing

Away. Here we sit, having
Some poetic thoughts, maybe
Not actually poetic,

Depending on what you think,
While the shadows revisit
Their familiar positions,

And the wind sings local airs,
And construction continues
Past a highway in the haze

Of plaguing uncertainties,
And this lizard may escape,
Although we’ll all disappear.