Gallery

At twilight, just before Christmas,
I visited the old neighborhood.

Parking a couple of blocks away,

I peered around the corner

where a gauntlet of gray sentinels stood waiting,

their windows staring dead-eyed apathy at me.

These were still my streets, though, 

just older and uglier,

like me, the boy who used to run them.

For a second I thought of running again,

not through them, away.

Hanging back near the stoop of a dingy,

boarded-up brick dowager,

I despaired over the changes,

the darkness and strangeness

of a place I couldn’t remember

from forty-some Christmases ago.

The snow began to fall,

turning the parked cars into

four-wheeled wedding cakes,

looking for all the world like

they were waiting to be topped

by young brides and grooms

who would stand in “I-do” fidelity against this

backdrop of “no-you-won’t” transience.

Without warning, but with a flash or two

from humming street lamps

and the gumdrop blush

of snow-covered Christmas lights,

my changed neighborhood changed again,

if only for a short time.

It took on the glow of something new,

something right out of the box,

instead of the decaying piece of Albany

we had both become.

Staring at it all for one more minute,

like I was an old box camera--

a long, long exposure--

I burned a picture

I wanted to keep of something wondrous

I wanted to remember of something wonderful

that didn’t exist anymore or maybe

never did at all.

Here's a little longer one in response to the prompt for a CITY poem posed by my friend Claudia Schoenfeld at dVerse Poets Pub. She's running the Poetics shift this week.  This is about Albany and change and light. It's a look at my old neighborhood in a quite different light, with an older set of eyes and a newer heart.