Westside

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.