BY GEORGE MCDERMOTT

Neighbors’ yard is disappearing

with a distant sound of flowing water

like draining a swamp or flushing a toilet.

Sandy soil cascading inward,

municipal crews erecting barriers,

Action News drones overhead.

Passersby stop and stare,

cops can't disperse the crowd.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

More nothing to see with every hour—

the emptiness growing wider and deeper,

swallowing gardens, swallowing toys,

leaving neighbors no place to go.

They stand outside, wiping their eyes,

hugging themselves. Action News

asks what they feel. They struggle to answer,

look to each other, struggle and fail.

Nothing to see here.

People from other neighborhoods

hold their tongues, hold their distance,

hold their hooded eyes averted,

cling to their faith in separation,

in geography as privilege.

Neighbors murmur incantations,

shading their eyes to squint at the sky,

flinging flowers into the hole.

Nothing to see.

George McDermott grew up in New York, went to college in Massachusetts, and spent most of his adult years in Pennsylvania. He's now living in Florida, which is ... um ... different. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of literary journals, as well as in the Philadelphia Inquirer.