the rix mix

Out to the post office & library, neighborhood branches, as the sun set.
Cold, no wind. Around the corner, the old Russian Orthodox priest knocking
hardened snow off the bushes in front of his rectory across the street from
gold domed St. Peter's, I wished him a Merry Christmas (January 7).
Two blocks along, a small stucco Methodist Church. & a lot where the last
really large unrenovated Four Square house in the area, a beautiful thing
with two story pillars in front that hadn't even been a funeral home,
was torn down last September. Later, walking home, waxing gibbous moon -
it's full tomorrow - shining through streaks of clouds that were like
shaved ice, I stopped several times to look at the sky. Only a few houses
had lots of lights & decorations, nothing in the neighborhood extreme
or theatrical. Although the making over of solid pre-WWII frame houses
into faux Spanish villas with brick walls & white ironwork fences does
nothing for me. There are thousands of old suburban neighborhoods like this
in Jersey, so many that you wouldn't know where you were if dropped into one
but it would look familiar all the same. My mom grew up somewhere around here.
I was raised on a street like it about two miles west, & they continue
pretty much without break for ten miles along the old commuter line
of the Jersey Central Railroad. It was a pleasant walk. It reminded me of
a brooding, teenage budding poet, walking on similar December evenings
over forty years ago.