Evolution

Revisiting, reacquainting around my 'hood:


--the golden azalea, velvety and perfumed
--Stella, who always barks at me
--the plum tree where for years I gathered windfalls in September
--a house on blocks, foundation under construction
--the fig tree on the corner, fully laden this year
--the hedge whose blossoms smell like cocoa-butter
--the Rabbi's house, empty
--the peek-a-boo tree

So many gone now from those lickety-split-quick years of child-rearing:

--Mark, Carol, Marilyn, Pat, Mary, Ben, the Durans, Mr. Nelson -- died, divorced, foreclosed.

And those of us still present:

Candy, Linda, Guy, Tom, Roy, Chrissie, Pam. Assorted young-adult children. Assorted young and spirited new-comers with fresh paint and toddlers, with an energy and endurance I used to claim as my own.

This brief Robert Frost poem came up in conversation at work yesterday, apropos to the subject at hand:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.