Once I caught them tossing rocks at passing cars;
My wife warned them against hurling
Unripe peaches at girls across the street.
They spent today wheeling their bikes
Between their rented slant-roof bungalow
And the shattered tennis courts at school.
Their dad’s been laid off fourteen days,
His rusted truck sulks in the driveway
With its ladders and buckets akimbo.
He’s teaching them how to smoke
Pot in their tangled-root backyard:
The rat-faced boys inhale like pros.
They stand around the steel tank pool,
Light bottle rockets with their roach
And watch them skirt across the water’s surface.