Walk Two - Yellow Line and Bittersweet Sky

Billowing trees commence a new freedom

as day has turned to night

Down a long, dark street,

covered in evening black and blue,

a row of tall lights make a special path.

To the twirling of trees,

in the early evening breeze,

a black flag responds,

wiggling through wind.

It wrinkles the giant pair of scissors

designed on its imprint.

TWO SIX TWO,

a hanging sign reads in bright lights,

straight ahead.

A restaurant sits beneath

its clarifying pose.

I imagine a performer dancing

in a big, shimmery red sheet of cloth,

down an alley where a filled flower box

is spotlighted.

The passage is mysterious, yet gentle.

Spruce street sits in front of

a row of dangling trees, a jogger,

and more flower boxes stretched

across a building made of bricks.

Brilliant flashes of purple live in this painting.

BLACK LIVES MATTER,

says the black crinkled cloth

sitting boldly in someone’s window.

The white frame holds the sign

like a gallery piece.

And right before my eyes,

a new jogger…

She runs with the swing of her ponytail,

beneath a window,

which holds a lit-up skeleton

waving its boned hands at me.

I turn the corner and onto a new path;

a yellow line in the concrete

stretching beneath a new row of trees.

They are low and hovering.

I pass through them, gaining clarity,

seeing my reflection in the window

of the school building beside me.

On the next street,

an arch catches my eye.

I retreat backward, peering

into the orange-red of its portal.

The loops form inside of each other

and large black gates separate them each.

I wonder who occupies this “new” place.

Twinkling on their own time,

tiny orange cubes light up a small balcony

on a majestic building.

I imagine great stories being told there.

I catch a gimplse,

in passing,

of two maps resting

on a blue wall, framed,

inside of someone’s apartment.

I take a left turn on Lombard street,

where I notice the “writer’s room,”

a white box with large windows

in the corner of a building.

It rests beneath a blue,

black, and gray sky.

It rests beneath desire and gratitude.

The sky is bittersweet.