Dormant as a sleeping animal that never wakes, it lays,
Eternal as ellipsis points, baking in sun, freezing in snow, it lays,
Like a river which never runs, it is run upon, like a bridge that
Never ends, it is crossed never completely.
For there is always further to go, where we stop, where the tides take us,
This is not a decision prodded by currents but one made from the
Currents running in our veins, feeding synapsis which flower with
Every decision we make.
Entire lives can go by, noticing the man on the street,
Seeing trees lining boulevards and avenues hearing the birds in trees,
Noticing a man fixing telephone wires,
Noticing nothing about the street and seeing everything happening upon it.
Is the city street the city itself?
What is left were it to be rolled up
Like untethered ribbons unrolled
The silent part of any journey.
Where are you going, it seems to groan,
So silently that it was as if it had not spoken at all.
The street has seen more than most of us can hope to in our lives.
It has seen buildings blossom, grow, reaching for the skies
That they will never reach.
It has seen children grow into teens, grow into adults
Grow into lives that at first do not fit, and it has seen
Those lives fade into that twilight of old ages.
Remember our cities and their streets, remember how Main Street
Leads to that street, leads to this street, leads to 4th street, leads like
5th street, leads to that street, leads to this street, leads to 6th street,
leads to this street, leads to that street, leads to 7th street leads back to
Main Street, leads to this street leads to that street leads to back alleys
Running in the background of our lives leads to this street leads to that street. Leads to you, that person standing in the distance
Waiting. Is it for me? Could you be that someone
Where this road journeys? Could you be that standing
Some one off in the distance begging me to keep walking From this side of the city to another.
For we all will reach a point where the street continues
But we do not.
We learn to look at watches and memorize
Positions of the sun, but only the few learn
The nuances of a streets hum which tells us
The time by the pace of it’s noise,
We do not learn that the touch of temperature
That it offers can tell us the seasons.
When the street is alone, clothed in autumn colors, When the rush of rush hour has finally waned and died,
When a light rain comes to bath the street and wash away
It’s dust, there is always that moment, of big city silence
That descends upon it, when the water makes the surface a
Mirror and looking down one can catch a glimpse of the
Distorted imagine of the self within the washed concrete
And there, within heart that reach further than the rest,
Once in not every lifetime, a person will see the street
Detached from it’s context and finally understand it
For the first and maybe the last time.
