This is where I wrote my poem,
this craggy, jagged sidewalk:
brown and gray with pebbled,
oil-soaked patches, and near the yellow-painted curb,
whose rotted cigarette stumps and
empty soda cans are
left for birds who sing and chirp
in the friendly treetops.
A stop sign presents red octagonality
near a woman. She walks and turns, looking
at house numbers, then finds her car and leaves.
Nonetheless, thin, silken wisps and bright sky above
hang gilded by the almost-spring sun,
this Sunday evening, shortly ’til seven.
Streetlamps lack their illumination.
Themselves ashen, they cast slender shadows.
Gangly green weeds sprung from recent rains
crack the blacktop’s edge, each an
image of the imperturbable.
An engine starts.
A bird answers.
A green car rounds the sigiled street corner.
As one arrives, someone else leaves.
(3/9/2015, 3/18/2015)
