Figured Dark: Poems

On a Visit to His Namesake City, St. Paul Walks Six Blocks of Goodrich Avenue

On a Visit to His Namesake City, St. Paul Walks Six Blocks of Goodrich Avenue He turns at the Lutheran Church and walks the first block. It is good in the gathering dusk––the stuccoed homes, sprinklers ratcheting the lawns. He sidesteps a tricycle, stops to smell the lilies and the heliotropes. From the windows of a bungalow, the sound of Spyro Gyra lofts into the street, trumpet and sax swirling through the smoke of burgers on the grill. He hikes his robes, does a little dance, then cautions himself, though he knows that a dance, an act of simple joy, isn’t always an occasion for sin. A woman crosses Pascal Street, towing a child in a red wagon. Paul thinks, Yes, I could walk with them, patiently pull that wagon, kindly wipe the child’s nose, perhaps talk on the ways of hummingbirds. He considers taking a wife. Thinks twice. Better though, to marry than to burn. On this street–– among the eighty-year-old homes, the flower pots and Subarus, he can’t imagine honky-tonks or country music. But service clubs and string quartets, an ice cream social, the sonorous voice of Garrison Keillor each Saturday at five–– even with that small penance–– 87 it would be a good life. It comforts him to think of it: four bedrooms and a chopping block, a spa on the modest deck, a wife to call when he was on the road, preaching in the shopping malls. He does not dwell upon the wolf of winter. Where the pavement ends at a precipice, he turns back. He remembers the burgers on that grill––thinks, on a street like this, a tired man, a man who has walked for many years pursuing the Lord’s work, surely he could step into a neighbor’s yard and say Hello! Begin with talk of the various fescues, or how the nasturtiums are coming in, nurse a glass of wine for his stomach’s sake and talk on until dark about the Twins. 88 ...