A View Poem by Ryan Glover

Movement, everywhere, turning, twisting, ceaseless in its goal to be somewhere else.
American-made trucks, gas guzzlers, foreign-made cars, hybrids, an occasional blue and white cruiser blasts by lights blazing.
Little insects for which I know no name, cockroaches, grey and pale white moths scurrying around my feet, flying right up to my face while I sit on my third story balcony.
During the day, I see brown lizards turning bright green when they make leaps of death from off white concrete to spring time leaves.
And squirrels chasing each other, rolling through the dirt, and up trees and fences, skipping along in a hurried rush.
Amidst it all, the big oak, standing center stage in a small clearing not big enough for another apartment building.
I want to scamper all over it, and build a fort with a rope swing, and a no girls allowed sign,
And yell at passersby, carrying back bags on their way to school or the gym, and then hide behind the big thick branches,
So they’ll never know from where my heckling came.
Activity here and there, and all over, stretches my eyes all over the place, to dogs walking their owners, to buzzing wasps building nests,
And making me nervous when they zoom by,
And to cardinals puffing out their bright red chests, and mockingbirds stealing tunes from their neighbors, and woodpeckers chipping away at the bark,
Big flakes of it falling to the ground.
So much to watch, while I sit, everything in motion and moving.

2008