No maps for these

Statues step down from their pedestals

to offer us an old but still useful malice.

Familiar buildings reach higher than they ever have.

The pain their lean meeting rooms held is no longer contained.

We cut between cars and cross mid-block to avoid

the new intersections made of streets we know never met.

The corner stores are right where they were

and their postcard racks still overflow with silence.

In the park, fledglings inhabit accidental nests in leafless trees

waiting for mothers that may have forgotten.

The riverbank crumbles faster.

Only our shadows hold in the flow.

We step back. We step back again.