bookends

not where he usually found them

                                   though thats where he found thesefinding himself distracted by the rotting road under his feet through his worn shoes a hole in the toe of one hole in the sole of the other

an old street

             its composite stones and pebbles were being revealedwere no longer denied the sunlightwarming in it again after mixed and buried in sand and concrete for the better part of a century                                

he tucked the book he was reading under his arm

                                                     instead

he tried to read the rocks

his feet were more successful

they could read its braille

it was when he stopped to take in the roads devolution that he recognised the first bookend  to his left

a daycare held at a church children playing insidecontained by a chainlinked fence

he couldnt identify the playground equipment 

                                                  there were no swings or slides or jungle gyms or a concrete sewer pipe to scramble over and within  made a great fort

he couldnt see if they played on woodchips

at the fencededge above him he saw two little boys a little girl she wore a dress a tiara woundup in her mussed blonde tresses one of the boys also wore a tiara

without reason he turned suddenlylooked oneeighty away to what had been his right as he walkedread up the street

   there another bookend

this he looked down into

a small greenspace

a small whitepainted concrete bench on the grass

it too was separated from him by a chainlinked fence

he knew the place a school that taught assisted adults with developmental disabilities

a woman stood on the grass at the edge of a blacktopped parking lot

she was very small not much taller than the little girl wearing the tiara her hair was also blonde  cut in a manageable Dutch Boy

she was aloneheld an opened hand to her chest as if restraining herself then  thumped her chest as she jerked forward from the waist again and again and again and again . . . he didnt count the times

   finally   uncomfortably

                                he looked away

he collected bookends

these were an odd pair

possibly 2PM,  Monday,  4  12. 23

1212AM,  day-between-2-Ts,  6  12. 23

0927,  day-between-2-Ts