Who?

Well, Czeslaw Milosz has done it again.  I look forward to Saturday mornings when I read from his poetry collection, because it usually produces satisfying poetry of my own. 

I've been working my way through his multi-part poem "Lithuania, After Fifty-Two Years."  In it, he has returned to his childhood neighborhood, and each time he takes me to mine.

Walking the two blocks to St. Mark's School in Cleveland is one of my most solid memories.  I'm taken there quite often. Today, it happened again:

A young girl once walked this street,

knew every crack in the sidewalk, 

every tree, the stop signs.

Who is the girl who is walking it now

to the same school, past the same park?

Does she have a friend who splits

off to walk a different way? Does

she have those older boys who

throw snowballs at her in the winter?

Does she still walk home for lunch

and then return -- or have those

days changed?

Who is the girl who runs multiplication tables in her

head as she walks, whose teachers reach her with the

structure of language, small art projects on

Friday afternoons?

Does she still exist?

Or is she gone, never to return,

like the Lake Erie fog horns?