Reaching Back

It’s difficult finding anyone from the old days.

It’s springtime and I’m alone in the neighborhood.

I enter the general store,

 apartment house,

 movie theatre,

city park,

nothing remotely recognizable.

Damn…

Those statues in the park,

were they always so big?

And the squirrels,

the birds,

even the ants,

so hidden

amongst the quiet,

the trees of no movement.

And…

Where is the bus that always stopped at the corner,

the sidewalk grocers,

the barbershop,

the bakery,

the voracious sparrows pecking crumbs?

How about…

The early school

where Miss Bean was forever correcting papers

long into the night?

The downer is I can’t even find the street.

I guess this is how it is.

I’ll make another tour of neighborhood.

Bound to meet someone that can direct me the right way,

and maybe point me to a place to sleep,

since I’ve no return ticket

back to wherever I came from

on whatever mode of transport brought me to

this day…

this night…

this lost time.