Welcome back to Division Street: the campfires,
a walk along the Beach Road, somewhere
between words lost or spoken from a wooden patio bench
outside the educational walls you first strode past
in those mysterious dark blue shorts and white top

Welcome back to intellectual kisses, Webster’s definitions,
a protest of perfume, smoke-and-mirrors where everything
is closer than it appears

Welcome back to when people actually thought
about what God thought about them,
the beautiful blue balcony, the blue sedan parked
in the street, and all those blue times
we walked beneath corner street lights,
watching night moths bang against huge bulbs

The world hummed truer then and I didn’t know
it wasn’t going to get much better

Welcome back to the Cabin
where I read Robert Creeley’s “The Hero”
for the first time and wondered 
why all the heroes died

Everyone should memorize impermanence,
it’s like waiting for a little more space, a little heart

Welcome back to the dock of my youth, it glistens
in the clear, blue morning, pulls up beside me, waits
mean and earthly, like your heart

I wanted to stay until everything made sense but there wasn’t time,
there is never enough time watching someone leave

Tim J Brennan is a former Altoona resident and UW-Eau Claire grad, class of 1983. Brennan recently retired after thirty-two years of teaching Secondary English.