Last night, while I waited outside your house
For your wife to go to sleep,
I got sleepy,
And to stay awake,
I went through your mail.
I had taken it with me, like a monkey,
Up into the branches of a sycamore,
But your mail was as boring as mine is.
When I finally saw all your lights go off in your house,
I climbed down,
But a limb snagged my vest,
And hung me out to dry,
A package stuck in a fork of the tree.
The rest of your mail went fluttering down
Like falling leaves.

That's when your neighbors across the street
Heard the clatter and turned their porch lights on.
Just about then the branch I was snagged on snapped,
And I fell, flat on my back on the ground.

I lay there smiling, happy to be alive,
Staring up through the sycamore
At the bright stars shining down,
While your neighbor man yelled into the night
At "You damn kids!" And a few other vagrant unnamed miscreants.

He went back in and turned off his lights
And I stood up, dusted myself off,
Picked up all your scattered mail,
And then I noticed that one package
That had stuck up in the tree out of my reach.

I jumped up and grabbed a branch
And tried to swing up and knock it down.
The branch cracked and made a rather loud pop,
And your neighbor's lights came back on.
I swung my feet up just as the branch broke
And stood up in the fork of the tree
Like a possum.
I watched your neighbor storm
Out his front door and down his front steps
And across the street
And right over to where I was.

I jumped down out of the tree
And landed at his feet.
He began to lecture me and I proceeded to give him a cussing.
I told him I was only trying to help you get your mail.
He was tall, and so he simply reached up
And took the package down for me.
He must've thought all my dirty talk was talkin' dirty,
For quietly now, and like a knight,
He bent at the waist to bow to me,
And then, went to one knee
As if to propose,
And said, "At your service, Ma'am."

And then he asked if he could take me to IHOP.

Well I tell you all this to say,
That if your mail looked a bit disheveled,
It may or may not have been through a lot last night.

-jenn