Sidewalk slabs are replaced out of order one by one,
year upon year, a broken football player’s teeth spit into the grass;
the cool April sun genuflects and shines through the bright green blades,
the shy ruffed hyacinth hiding behind the downspout.
I see you there, says the yawning sun.
I see your beauty.
A funeral procession beats a tattoo in my head, a celebration, a life in review,
Kodachrome slides, curled black and white photos, albums spavined on the floor
and ravaged years ago for graduations, anniversaries,
the empty spaces ragged and flagged or tagged with Post-Its
so I could return the photos to their proper places –
but who was I kidding? I was never going back.
These disorderly these holy these profane books of the dead, the divorced, the estranged,
squares holding us laughing on the river, water shining, rafts still afloat –
starry skies and bonfires, prom squires, Lake Michigan beaches, no one reaches
for what lies beneath
and yet if I turn them over I do not find the truth,
that black cumulus cloud tense and roiling over the horizon.
I can see my thoughts as though a balloon: it may yet work!
even though slab after slab were cracked and crumbling and years from repair –
and though it be unseemly to say, oh! It’s a revelation to me now –
I was beautiful then, in those years, though given to think not-
alive with youth and strength and friends and health-
but now in this holy and torn spring I amble past the pickle factory
and the slanting house with a bullet hole and the one that smells like weed
and the one with bikes stacked on the porches,
these thoughts building a cairn upon my doorstep and…
I am too late! Too late! I cannot help the sparrows
who are clutching and swinging on the strand of porch lights, scolding
and cheeping and all but pointing at a great black crow
pillaging their eggs at the top of the pillar post – and
by the time I understand the mortal threat
(again, it happens, again!) the nest is finished.
The crow is fed and fled and the sparrows scattered,
the nest abandoned, the bulbs swaying and
smearing yolky light slowly across the purple sky and cool sidewalks,
whether cracked or new, ravaged or healed,
waiting to be seen
in tomorrow’s light.
Halfway North 