Passages

You walk at dusk, the dog padding beside you, her gait matched to yours, her desire to please a comfort. You walk where moccasins and split hooves of bison pressed the soil, where explorers portaged boats around the falls, where the fathers of this town laid out checkerboard streets, decreed the elms arched overhead. You pass over the old trail of streetcars covered with asphalt. Your path tunnels before you through lacy elms, falls away behind to a distance no one remembers.