This is About a Boy Who Lived Around the Corner from Where I Grew Up

Calle Real

At the dump behind the hill in back of
Real Street, he shot bottle, snake, and sparrow
with equal joy. He peed on the Frigidaire,
aimed rocks at a motion in debris
or love-stained bedding. He never put fire
to anything, like friends might, just to watch
curl and acceleration take their life
toward some decisive brink before
they ran. He spent those last half hours before dinner
rummaging through cold come up from the coast,

and it was not necessarily Heaven
in that new dark, and it was nothing like
Torment going home to plain cooking and six
others saying grace in unison, warm
in electric heat and the TV on
until bedtime. On the other side
of Real Street, he lingered because the bats
came out and crickets went quiet. Beyond
the hill, past his home, the reddest
western sky was sinking behind Catalina

into the sea. And the whole world could be
watching it, that slow burn through smog, an eyelash
of white that might be missile or jet
lit above the curve of earth. In his
small bowl of dusk, he emptied the rifle
and kept pellets for later. By now
he was thinking of where his feet landed,
the last twitches of a bird, the puma
just now leaving her cave somewhere close. Then
these lamps, all these houses that knew him.