Walkway

The sudden green of the walkway

tumbles up in reaching leaves

and autumn flashes amidst the dark shades:

but splashed across the pavement

damp litter is speckled and spattered.

Old plastic Satan has fled this way

shedding scales of dirt and dollops

of body-filth, damp with bad breath,

and the soil is flecked with dead

and discarded plastic; white hues

of promised purity; and streaked

with the yellows, reds and blues

of the old wrappings of idle shoppers.

Litter sleeps filthily upon the earth,

breeding.

And schoolchildren amble by,

hands in pockets, beanies pulled   

low against the wintering sky,

walking the path between

the living green

and profane carelessness,

the long path of the shadow

of death.

 - Brian Walter