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I walk two hours
Out to wider streets.
Built to take the sleepy inner afternoon
To its suburban conclusion.
Amid the concrete parted by the life-paths
Of the alley trees, who bear their fresh badges
Of young life, for this year;
Like a thousand green parking permits.
The new layer, of a smooth white coat
A spring paint-covering to mark our time alone.

One day we’ll see one cut down, and count it out
See how wide this forever really was.
Their ropy fingers reaching out,
Into a network that wires the sparse nature
Refusing to let full go
Of its last, tenuous but sticky hold
On this grey earth.
Like pulling the sappy inside
Out of a blade of wild grass;
As the tiny lives try to find a scrap-
Caressing with their string legs,
Of Bare skin left uncovered
By the folds of summer.

Gardens parked neatly outside
The predictable Georgian patchwork.
Or turning down an offshoot
I find myself in a wilderness populated
By businesslike bees and a few
Leafy excuses for flowers.
Blossom carpets the gutters,
And Starbucks cups puncture
My peripheral vision.
The path ends at the steps, so
I hesitate, to catch time where it’s standing…
Still again, hours move sticky against stone
Leaving silver time-tracks. And people smile
At my heart struggling,
Against gale-force winds
And my head quiet on my shoulders,
In the eye of a storm.