In my front garden bed a troupe of enthusiastic snowdrops is already searching for
a glimpse of spring. A pale, long-unseen sun plays the shifting sidewalk shadows:
needle, leaf, and thickened trunk. Moss is everywhere, creeping through cracks and
blanketing stained asphalt. The house on the corner is still draped in Christmas lights
that I don't remember glowing during the season. The tree behind it was topped last
spring so that above the bowing fir two thick branches reach bare and truncated toward
the sky, disabled.
Down the street I pass my daughter's "wishing tree" and utter something quietly for
her. Sirens and a helicopter chop the air heading toward Children's Hospital. A friend's
six year-old niece waits there, a seam of stitches crossing the right side of her
scalp.
At the park I climb an ancient rock staircase to the empty field taken over by dogs
and their parent-like owners. There are two new construction sites along the opposite
street; small bungalows leveled to accommodate monster homes with perfect feng shui.
A conversation in Tagalog between two women watching the dogs play. Not the owners
of these houses.
I wonder about the coyote. Somehow I know his den lies close by. A man stands surveying
his home, patting his thighs in exercise. A clump of snowdrops blooms next to a pile
of dog shit. I can't see through the windows of these homes— even at night.
