Even when you walk the same street
two hours later, things look different—

picket fence shadows slanting northward,
bread plate-sized sycamore leaves
wind-pressed against a retaining wall.

The walk home feels different, too—
mid afternoon sun on your face,
a vigorous breeze skittering the leavings
under so many trees silently preparing
to release the year’s foliage, standing tall
as they have for generations along this
busy street.

A bicycled boy from the middle school
down the sidewalk, stops, waits for you
to pass, and, two blocks later, another boy,
both helmeted, pedaling furiously,
and just now a pig-tailed, plaid-skirted girl
from another era walking home from
the Catholic elementary school where,
earlier, you heard children’s voices
ricochet off the playground.

You smile at stepping stones painted in
rainbow colors, the texture of criss-crossed
palm tree bark, picket fence shadows,
and the unspoken trust of plastic-sheathed
dry cleaning flapping like translucent ghosts,
hanging on a front porch mail slot, delivered
from the cleaners a block away.

You walk, speaking into your phone,
looking as if you cannot move without
this electronic device, drivers in cars
probably judging you, but this is the way
without pen and paper you capture
the poem, gathering.

And, oh, what a gift it is, this neighborhood
in this city of trees that has sheltered you
for decades, the familiar sidewalk curving
onto your block where you pass your favorite
neighbor ginkgo, still green-fanned, this old
friend that will release its bounty next month,
goldening the lawn around it.

You walk home in spots of light
and periods of dense shadow,
an obvious metaphor, you think,
hardly poem-worthy,

but you grab it out of the air,
set it down on a line,
just to see how it looks.

There.
Like that.