God sees me. I see you. You're just like me.
This is the cul-de-sac I've longed to live on.
Pure-white and dormered houses sit handsomely

along the slate-roofed, yew-lined neighborhood.
Past there is where my daughters walk to school,
across the common rounded by a wood.

informs me how the earth is grown so small,
ringed in spice routes of connectivity.

My father lived and died in his same chair
and kept it to one beer. There's good in that.
Who could look down upon, or even dare

to question, what he managed out of life?
Age makes us foolish. Still, he had a house,
a patch of grass and room to breathe, a wife.

It's my house now, and I do as I please.
I bless his name. I edge the yard, plant greens.
Our girls swing on the porch in a coming breeze.


About this poem
"The phrase 'living room' or 'living space' suggests home, habitat, comfort, but the idea of a room to live can also carry a sinister charge. Neighborhoods bring people together, but they also divide. Certain things that we embrace-family, beliefs, the Internet-purport to bring us closer but are in fact isolating."
-David Yezzi

About David Yezzi
David Yezzi is the author of "Birds of the Air" (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013). He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 David Yezzi. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate