Calendrical

The path ever visible, scaffolding of days months seasons, I wore it with my feet round & round that small ranch house on LaSalle, every holiday birthday wedding, trips planned taken forgotten, courses designed taught abandoned, sorrows longings deaths all laid on that endless yard, shrubs snugging red brick wall, delicate strawberry plants crouched by the whirring air conditioner, double clothesline strung between T-pole and maple, patio half-roofed (so resonant in rain), redwood chairs, purple lilacs, tomato garden, wheelbarrow, cemented blue swing-set, becoming January planted in her flower patch out by the road, May rounding the corner into summer by the patio’s edge, June-July ever bright and hot, hooked to the flattest part of the back yard, fall perched & beckoning at the rusty slide edge where I slid running headlong into elementary school days, Thanksgiving waiting crisp in low light near garage wall, winter tracking darkness across the front yard, climbing just after Christmas toward the flower patch by the road, edged now with frost where January begins anew and the years roll round & round that path in my mind, calendrical.