7:30am. Tuesday

I would never know the sweetness of this place, the kindness, if i didn't take myself out into it in the morning.  For so long I have lived without knowing.

These lots of openness, of green where once houses have been. Tell-tale driveway dip in the walk, sometimes even the stairs of a stoop. Sometimes cars are left there like cows in the field, still grazers, waiting. 

In other places, tree roots ladder the red ground, spanning the incline, parked cars nosing up to them. The roots bare it, skinned in barking. The below surfacing to kiss the above.  Hello.

Two cats sitting upright behind their bowls, the grey and the cream. The little dog, black and white puff ball on a red cord, hurtling toward me, single sharp bark of surprise. The smokers on their stoop again, two women now, talking, the words: Wyatt Earp. Candy-stripe leggings, knees bent, chestnut hair falling loose, draping, the listener. 

I walk the length of Brown street, from 5th to 9th, all 4 blocks of it, hills and valleys without a curb or walkway, no sort of verge at all, the asphalt nosing into lawn, into woodland. Pink roses and red. Yellow canna and orange. Hosta blooming lavender. Honeysuckle. Holly so gleaming and so lethal.