Walking around,

You can’t help learning about longing

For an ordered world, gleaming from a manicured lawn.

How care comes from Chrysthaneumums

Planted tenderly in rings

Around a mailbox.

How the mezuzah on the doorframe

And the quiet outside 2B on a Friday evening,

Is a holy quiet.

How a wild, untamed front yard,

Private property and do not enter signs 

Speaks of brokenness, of loss, of a love once vibrant, now gone forever.

Walking around, you see strangers passing each other 

In grey oblivion, passing each other with sidelong glances of unspoken resentment, 

Passing each other with a glimmer of recognition.

You see newspapers delivered

At the front of a driveway,

Cars that never leave, visitors that never come.

You hear bodegas blaring

Latin dance music 

At eight in the morning.

You hear heated conversations

Happening right in the middle

Of the sidewalk.

You see families

Hanging out on their stoops

Watching the neighborhood.

Walking down a country road

Dipping down 

Through the middle of two ponds.

Bamboo,

Full of snow, bends down

Across the road.

The distance between houses, 

The distance between lives that suggests 

How close should we get to other human beings.

Walking around

On the street where you grew up,

The street of sacred memory.

The slope of the ground,

The bend of the road,

The deep familiarity of the houses.

Late at night when everyone is asleep,

Alone, standing in the middle of the street,

You have never felt more seen.