red barberries

an awful Christmas carol
stuck in my head

an old man now

I take a look at myself:
so much more
than that rail-thin kid
who loved the blues

college town

even the old motel
is younger than me

ancient street tree

all its alternative routes
marked X

leafprint in concrete

I wouldn’t have hesitated to step on the real thing

a line of balloons

beside the campus elms bobbing drunkenly

locust leaves

on the flat black roof haloed in dew