Passing Time by Paul Bluestein

The late afternoon sun painted the house on Devereaux Street
with shadow stencils of early autumn trees.
The FOR SALE sign, weedy lawn and overflowing mailbox
told me everything there was to know.
This was the house of someone who had lived alone,
without money enough to have the place cared for once they were gone.
No one to prune the roses, leggy and grown out of control.
No one to wash the windows curtained with cobwebs.
No one to pick up the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the fallen roof slate
scattered on the stoop.
Three small squares of glass set in the faded blue front door
looked like alien eyes watching me walk up the steps,
turn the key in the lock, open the door and call out
“Ma, I’m back”, though I knew there would be no answer.
Everything was as it had been when I lived there so many years before.
The Bohemian-overlay glass lamps, the plastic-covered couch,
The TV set in the corner of the room.
It was all the same and nothing was the same.
Time had left this changeling
in place of the brownstone I used to call home.
I settled into the chair that had been my father’s,
sat listening to the uneasy creaking of the attic
and watching dusk crawl across the walls
until the streetlights came on
and the moon rose red in the sky.

Paul Bluestein is a physician (done practicing) and a blues musician (still practicing). In addition to poems and short stories that have appeared in a wide variety of online and print publications, he has had two full-length books of poetry published - TIME PASSAGES in 2020 and FADE TO BLACK in 2021.