One Moment of Your Life Is a Street
The street's history is written in trees,
roots lifting asphalt,
making ridges where bicycles rattled.
There was the witch's house—
an old woman
behind unmoving curtains.
Even the bravest kid on the block
wouldn't cross her yard on a dare.
Then the street changes names.
Numbers begin again,
adding up to nothing—
that arithmetic of neighborhoods.
I sit on concrete steps,
dazed by heat.
A ghost moth lies there.
I nudge it.
Down the block, sprinklers turn slow arcs.
Children run through them screaming—
or maybe lovers,
hidden by water and sunlight.
Somewhere a porch swing moves.
Chains creak now and then.
Years later, after her death:
dog barking,
ghost moth on steps,
water flashing over grass.
The swing keeps time.
He finds it in his mourning jacket—
carried all those years.
Standing among flowers,
he reaches into that pocket again.
Attending a Workshop with a Famous Poet
In a Rhinebeck restaurant,
my mother leans close, whispers—
"The doctors say he doesn't have long."
At the workshop, the poet
asks us to write a question
on a slip of paper.
I write: My heart.
His heart.
"How do you write a poem
about a father dying
without surrendering to sentiment?"
Later, before the thousand-mile drive home,
my five-year-old son
wouldn't say goodbye.
It was August.
The backyard bright with heat and flags.
We stood there, asking him.
He refused.
Before we were out of the driveway,
something in me broke open.
I don't remember what the poet answered.
My father lived another five years.
I had time.
Still, I write this.
