Thundering upstairs neighbor
Where are you going?
Walking back and forth
From midnight to morning.
Your footsteps betray
A sense of unease
A life’s work undone
Malignant ambition.
Is it a family dynamic
That’s left you pacing the miles?
Your mother perhaps who lives downstairs.
A man burdened as someone’s child.
Someday you’ll fly lighter than air
Not even stomp up the stairs
To the third floor, one farther away
Then glide off the rooftop and soar.
Or perhaps your mother may drag you
Flapping and squawking
Up to the top of the nest
And fling you out over the streets of Brooklyn.
If she knows what’s best.