Hiatus

Hiatus

Pauses between fixations
full of flying river bugs
left & right hovering,
the humid afternoon
leafily tarted up
in the quiet neighbour's
fanfare back yard.

I am watching from a narrow balcony
four floors up,
the way he rests between
bouts of weeding the vegetable patch,
his wobbly garden chair set next
to a line of vivid tulips
that opened day before yesterday.

In my lap, dog-eared Sexton
morphing the helium of her scrutinized pain
into a bartering of light-headed gardens
circa 1963.

Nothing is where I'd have it –
all like the fragile makings
of a vigorous failed poem
that can't stop sorting through
a knack for lost beginnings.