There may be no other place in my life where I’m in observation mode more than in my own neighborhood. Despite its familiarity, I find its rhythms and the people that make up the neighborhood and the things that happen in our neighborhood fascinating.

There’s no other place in Racine County that I spend more time than in my own neighborhood. That’s likely true for you as well. It’s where I most often eat and sleep. It’s where I go for walks and runs. It’s where I arrive after a long day of work. It’s where I find myself among a few friends and a few strangers.

When I open the blinds in the morning, it’s like turning on the TV, but instead of watching a show or the news, I’m invited to observe what’s happening around me. Folks walking, squirrels running, garage doors open and close, cars drive too fast and sometimes noticeably slow. There are people I recognize, and people I’ve never met. I notice the man who walks his dog on time, every day, and the one kid who walks to the bus stop. I notice political signs going up, and then eventually going down. I notice the trees thinning and then filling again with the season. The occasional deer and raccoon. The way the sun and the clouds dance in the morning and hide in the evening.

Whether you like your neighborhood or not, it’s a part of you, and you’re a part of it. And Racine is full of so many kinds of neighborhoods, and so many kinds of people.

I really love the poem “Neighbors” by Jim Whiteside. It’s specific and feels incredibly real, despite the fact that I’ve never met Mary or Dr. Thomas. And while I don’t have a Mary or a Dr. Thomas living on my street, it’s easy for me to picture them living in their own neighborhood with their own neighbors.

Neighbors
by Jim Whiteside

mary

One of   just two kids on our street, I am coerced
into unenthusiastic doll-playing. Her room

is pink, the carpet tufted. The walls are lined
with pageant trophies—engraved metal plaques

and waving plastic gold girls. A small tiara.
Any two dolls can kiss, they just have to be dolls,

she says, laying one on another. Their long
nylon hair tangling. On her dresser,

a picture of her mother. She died when I was three,
she tells me, though she’s told me before.

She ignores her stepmom’s calling on our way
out the door. We ride our bikes through

the neighborhood, loose curls falling behind her.
Our tire tracks crisscrossing in the dirt.

  dr. thomas

He brings us gifts from his garden: tiger lilies
and a basket of zucchini blossoms, a note

for my mother—Thanks for watching the house
last week. By day he teaches French at the college

in town, the man he lives with is a painter.
They park their cars in the garage—for security.

In the evening light he wears a big straw hat,
sings hymns while he tends to their rows

of flowers, creeping squash tendrils, peonies
holding court against the house’s washed brick.

Mom finds a recipe to fry the blossoms
in a light batter with goat cheese. We drive by

in her red Suburban. He looks up from his work,
taking off a glove, waving with his real hand.

I would love to write a poem like this. To immortalize interactions and moments with the people who make up my neighborhood, the ones whose lives are running so closely alongside my own, it would be impossible to not feel the impact if only slightly.

That’s the prompt this week. Notice your neighborhood, and notice the people that make it a neighborhood. Whether you like them or not, put them into a poem: the things you know about them, the moments you share, the way it feels, how life in your particular pocket looks.

Title it “Neighbors,” and again, you’ve got a never-ending poetry project on your hands as your own neighborhood continues to unfold over the days to come.

Thanks, Mr. Whiteside, and thank you all for reading along and paying more attention to this place we all call home.

Happy Monday,
L.A. Sklba