The old man pauses in his walk

to press the bloodbeat of his wrist

among these low-slung homes

which, for sixty years,

have accreted powerboats and

cinderblock retaining walls

in honor of the human urge to alter.

A rare rain hits the sidewalk,

raising an aerosol to his sinuses

of settled dust and streptomyces,

tugging some stray synapse of the mind.

He sees them, postwar fathers, back again,

who haunted every Saturday garage,

planing 2x4s to steal an hour alone

awakened in the firethorn,

up from the deadleafed ground.

Visible through shirt-collars,

the autumn berries of the hedge,

the marrow running liquid in their bones.

Shadows in car-coats and four-in-hands,

samelike as they were when still alive,

crowd round to show off trains and soapbox cars,

all the wonders they’ve constructed for their sons

from the ruins of a busted roller skate.

Then evaporate with the limp shower

until the next foreshortened Inland Empire rain.