Life according to lawn ornaments

walking the dog past so many front yards
you get ideas about the people inside the houses
this one features two reindeer, a statue

of a prayerful Virgin Mary, a blue-clad Dutch girl
with yellow hair—not blonde, Crayola yellow—
bowing to a blue Dutch boy, and a urinating Cupid

in a birdbath. You shrug and wonder
about the people in the house and decide
they were put on earth to give deeper meaning

to the word “tacky.”

**

Sunday melts like a sputtering candle into Monday

found flowers to plant, pansies purple
and variegated yellow and orange callebrachoa
Trina’s Gerbera daisies and a few Dusty Millers

didn’t think about the job, uncertainty
or finances, now one more drink and sleep
and I won’t think about it then

didn’t find time to plant the flowers
tomorrow they’ll still bloom beautiful
on my front porch and we’ll pass them

on the way to work, and think, I’m sure,
how it’s sad that they have such short-lived beauty
but it’s we who live so long

with such uncertainty