Eau Claire looks good
but shaggy, like Jason Segel
or some other not quite A list actor needing a shave
and a few days without beer,
the grass is just now green
and the University is torn up,
the Sprites statue in an unfamiliar place
or maybe I just don’t remember where
it was, it’s been 25 years after all, and
my bike and I drift through Putnam park
and along the river behind Water Street where
the Camaraderie was, where we let our parents
take us to dinner
I ride by the three houses I lived in,
Chippewa, Union, Niagara streets, staring at
the windows of the rooms where I slept, trying
to see if something of who I was
before I finally decided, is left behind –
and here now Carson Park, where we tailgated,
and that’s where I see the metal detector man
slowly swinging the pole with its great disc eye
in neverending arcs, Cs across the uneven grass
looking for lost coins, for
anything forsaken of value
that he might collect and add to his pile,
to add to who he is,
while I have been looking up at windows
for any clues that I left behind
to tell me why I am
who I’ve become.
Halfway North 