Walking the streets of the hometown I left 50 years ago, I’m aware the stranger-others at windows will think “I do not know him.”
My father walked to this office during a heart attack, across the way the corner where Joey launched the ice-ball that bloodied a poor girl’s head, here the street where night herons roosted in sycamores. Here the brick school, massive, immortal, where we gathered to play games and learn some ways of men.
Everywhere the alleys we ran like bandits. There the murderer’s home, here the candy store, comic book shop, basketball court, forest scrub where we made forts.
The big trees are gone, the school disappeared, the house full of strangers, and I am brimful of ghosts, ghost myself in waiting.
