Parallel Lives

Oysters are the pistachios of the sea.

Kind of like your favorite pair of jeans 

demoted to garden duty as soon as

the new ones are on the clothes tree.

I like dirty half-finished bathrooms 

in boiler rooms. It’s just the way

I was raised. Please take time 

to praise the (real, living) trees:

finishing nails of the Earth, keeping 

the crust from sliding free on other tides.

Speaking of which, I watched 

our neighbor dump a bag 

of store-bought ice cubes 

across the icy sidewalk.

What, exactly, are we doing here?