for Janie Wilkie

Tableau From Another Time

I walked home from school

in the days when a child could still do that

in the days before 

the wall-mounted telephone

fell into disrepute

I carried my books in a plastic satchel

It was plaid with a red handle

and a metal clasp that looked like brass

but wasn’t

All the houses I passed on my 4 block trek 

were either white or gray

except one

tiny pink shotgun 

with a tumble-down porch

and screens full of holes

The lady there didn’t like kids 

to cut across her yard

with its patches of brown grass

sprinkled between the weeds

She glared

from the kitchen window

and sometimes

knocked on the glass

so I  would cross over to the other side of the road and quicken my steps till I was past that house

I crossed the street

without a crossing guard,

I walked home from school sometimes alone

or else I rode my bike

barefoot and without a helmet

with no fear at all

but for an old woman in a sad pink house

on a corner lot

of an old shell road

in a little town

where danger was a stranger