Poetry

Snowless Streets

As I walk along the snowless streets
Of a gray California winter,
The sidewalk cold beneath my feet,
I give a passing glance to the empty lots,
Vacant of purpose, like a mirror.

You are not here, in the gray of the sky
And the chill air. Yet I feel you still
Filling the vacuous spaces,
In the quiet susurrations of passing cars.

I remember how you filled my days
Flying down the freeway in a '99 Sebring.
And you kept my nights,
Our voices lingering into the deepening darkness.

I recall autumn falling upon us,
The trees burning away greens, leaving behind
Dry red and yellow leaves cracking like fire
Beneath our footsteps.

The gray smoke rising from chimneys.
The lasting impression of smoke on our clothes.

In the dead of winter that is half real and half imagined,
I see the warm summer days buried under drifts of snow
Only in my mind
And where once I found my home in these vagabond grays,
I find again that familiar feeling a stranger.