Change

Change
By ROSTI

I was on my way
To a place I grew up in.
I knew I was on the right road-
The big mountain was right where it was supposed to be…
The Brothers had lost most of their snow-pack
In the waning throes of that summer day.

But…the spidery cranes and laborers
Carrying sheet rock to and fro,
The skeletal web of girders and concrete
Everywhere I looked…
Not a familiar sight at all.
The bookstore now a high rise…very disorienting.

Gone was the PETCO
Where Ms. Kiddy had her nails done.
Gone was the old tavern
Where we’d drink and sing karaoke
And brunch together on Sundays.
Was this actually the right place?

It was so
All over the city…
Growing taller,
Bigger,
Shinier.
Places I’d visited many times…Gone.

Yet, in the midst of all that change,
There it was…Easy Street.
The familiar breakfast,
The records now replaced with CDs.
But Paul was there, and Alice, and Scott;
Teresa even made a cameo.

So,
The same but different.
In the midst of change,
Constancy.
We ate, we talked…
Even went by the old house, still there.

A comfort among the disquieting
Change.

© Richard A. Martin, Jr. MD, CPC 2016