Gates open to the West and streets are named and numbered –
repurposed
addresses, a neighborhood not unlike any other:
enclosures for souls plotted, aligned
in a specific grid – walls and fences make
good neighbors here, too.
Walking uneven pathways I realize the connected lives and
silent entwinings are repeating on the breeze of this cool,
light day.
Live oaks are few with roots too deep, too wide just as the
mothers and fathers and soldiers and
babies here: they have been the beauty of the Westside.
Families are chronicles, the whispering history. Here,
keepers of stories and tellers of tales gather: a peaceful
festival
of all that has gone before.
What has come and gone under the Master’s eye? A war
or two: some from Post 204 served gloriously and left a
golden
memory.
On a day some eighty years ago mother and young son
took hands and walked Northward one last time. Overgrown peace
is unbearable, a lightness reflected here but shaded there
by
sentry cedars – their roots running wide but shallow like
mine –
we both are interlopers here.
Whole groups: neighbors, families, babies, suitors and
girls, grandmothers
and maiden aunts along Third and Brown or
Fifth and Malvern.
Next door, down the road, and catty-corner: set up
as if houses and gardens and gossip
are dormant just now, awaiting the butterflies’ warming, a
permission to take flight
again.
Until then, clarity waits atop granite, brick, planters,
angels, and faded
forgotten forsythia, an innocent anticipation.
Not enough time – there never is –
and shouts from the playground round the corner have
dwindled as chill
drapes my shoulders.
Leaves whirl up, urging me along the path –
a retracing or new treads? I am
unsure.