ABBY CAPLIN

Blue Year

After the rains cleared skies and sidewalks, a hearse pulled
up across the street, covered body carried out, the neighbor
heading back up the front stairs in her dark glasses—
New Year’s hub has turned my neighborhood to snooze.
Under the marquee of the movie theater
that closed two years ago still advertising Parasite, the “e”
about to fall off, a man lives in a sleeping bag
behind greasy cardboard, where I used to show my ticket.
I see the Greek restaurant has closed, free broken chairs
stacked near the curb, marking the new surge of illness.
The weekly sanitation worker driving in short spurts uphill,
steering trash bins to his truck, loading and dumping
offerings of human detritus into the hopper and jumping back
into the cab, engaging the gears, plowing forward
a few feet at a time fascinates me, inspires me.
From my shelf, I choose some books and amble two streets
down to the blue birdhouse of the Little Free Library,
then head home with empty hands. Days later, I check
for what has changed; a book has been carried off
but I’m not sure which one. And I realize that’s the point— 

Abby Caplin’s poems have or will soon appear in AGNI, Catamaran, The MacGuffin, Manhattanville Review, Midwest Quarterly, Pennsylvania English, Salt Hill, TSR: The Southampton Review, Tikkun, and elsewhere. Among her awards, she has been a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry, semi-finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award, Best New Poets and Pushcart nominee, and a winner of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. She is a physician and practices mind-body medicine in San Francisco. http://abbycaplin.com