Open windows

He sits inside the shed
on an overturned five-gallon bucket
sharpening a lawnmower blade.
A bouquet of motor oil and plywood
tinged with the caustic allure
of chemical fertilizer and insecticide
and set to the sweet side with citronella
fills his nostrils with nostalgia
and the comfort of belonging.
A drop of sweat dangles
from the tip of his nose then falls
and splatters between his dusty boots.

Still hot for early September
this late in the afternoon.
Neighborhood sounds echo
through the open double door:
dishes dropping into a sink;
kitchen cabinets slamming shut.
A phone rings at the Garrity's
while the ball game plays from Szcymanski's garage.
He hums. He sharpens--
and flattens a lame cricket with his boot
feeling more crunch than expected.

He chuckles then
at hearing the worst of their private lives
drown out these simpler sounds of living.
A slap across the face
tops the crack of a line drive everytime.
A child's scream, even one born of melodrama,
carriers further and faster
than the whine of Tichenor's table saw.
They forget that it's still summertime,
that the windows are wide open.
It's about homework mostly,
or sometimes hair and makeup.
Other times it's a tired spouse,
a sick and tired spouse,
that informs the neighborhood her man's a selfish piece of shit.
A door slams and a car starts and a house goes quiet.
Then the Hucksteads start in.

He chuckles not because the fractured side
of family life is funny
or because his is any different,
but because this place, this manly hideaway
full of tools and gasoline and sawdust
reminds him of his father's house.
And there,
the space between one home and the next
was no more than eight feet.
There was no air conditioning then -- not in that neighborhood.
And each home housed at least a brood of six.

He chuckles now because it took him this long
to understand
why not all the neighborhood parents were friends.
And he thought about what old man Lindstrom must have heard
back then in the late afternoons
working in his shed
on South Justine Street
about the goings on behind closed doors
but in front of summer's open windows.