Dog Daze

ONE
I stare out into
the backyard

through the silver-
barred back door

after sunset to find
lightning bugs clicking

on, off, on against
the deep browns

of garages and
apartment buildings

while skyrockets
paint the blue

with slashes of
yellow and green,

with the sounds
of bursting air.

TWO
I'm waiting not so patiently
for the sky to decide which
way it would like to spin
the dial--toward merely gloomy
midsummer overcoat or full-force
frontal passage with pea-soup wall
of smoke flowing forward over
North Side three-flats and
South Side commuter tracks,
over kids blowing off leftover
Independence Day incendiaries
and playing Hide and Seek through
empty lots, gangways, gray back
porches and black trash cans, over
my uncovered head leaning against
a rusting pillar just barely propping
up the Sedgwick El stop where
dime-sized storm drops start
to plink and dive and get sucked
down greedily by the dry
widened planks of the platform
as if the impending moisture
could make them trees again.