Here now

Today I was out walking in this small town. The town where I was born, a place we lived until I was six (before moving to New Mexico and Colorado) and then returned to a few years later. Staying until I was eleven, when we moved to Joseph. There are many houses around the town we lived in or had friends, relatives, places I walk past that have memories. One corner a woman had a parrot, not a friendly parrot, but she let us talk to it. On another a retired teacher who read us books. The library was just a few blocks away from some of the houses, in another we had to ride our bikes to get there.

I learned to swim at the pool, beside the city park. I used to go to the park at night, years later in my cape and swing and swing and swing. Today I did a quick turn on the swings and then walked up the little hill; the pool a dead spot in the grass, long gone. I walked down past the fairgrounds, there are some little places that way with horses around them, the scent of old hay and mud and horse and manure still a nostalgic aroma. Deer wander all over, nibbling lawns, watching me with careful stares. When I return to my mother’s house all of the neighbor’s chickens are feasting on the lawn, their dogs in the chicken yard doing what dogs do, eating things.

I talked to a man who had worked with my dad, whose children I once babysat, who I last saw three years ago when he helped my parent’s move to this place right before my dad passed away. He told me about a road trip he took with his parents and siblings and grandmother in the late 1950’s, a six-week trip through Texas and Missouri, Wyoming and Iowa. “Let me tell you,” he said, “that’s a long way to go with your grandma.”

Here's a poem from today and some pictures of this randomness.

                                     

Here now the hill
raced down on bikes
its steepness conquered
by our trusted brakes, our balance.
Here now the small downtown.
It seems a full third
of the buildings boarded
up or under renovation.
Here now the old market
local owned and loved.
Here now the library,
the courthouse denuded
of pines. The bookstore
that opens at 7:30 AM!
The former Safeway;
the former butcher shop;
the former steakhouse;
bar; 24-hour café; drug store
all gone. Here now the reformed
curve that leads to Hurricane Creek,
Joseph, the lake. Here now
all the houses on the streets
where we walked and rode,
skipped and ran, under
the mountain’s watch.