Place Where You Live:

Riverwest, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Riverwest Rain

I wasn’t born or raised here, didn’t go to school here; but I’d visited over the years. There’s a bookstore, now just down the street, that was miles away in a different time, a different place: Woodland Pattern has embraced my heart and mind in heavy worded limbs and chapbook fingers for decades.

But I only visited.

The people waved and said, ‘Hi’, whenever I passed by. Conversations were always easygoing, informed: liberally political, ‘artsy’, poetical: both young and old, a palette of skin, highly intellectual and not. Pleasant, all.

But I only visited.

Went to university on the other side of the river, living in Sandburg Halls that first year (their first year). Worked as a (disorderly) Orderly at the old Columbia Hospital. Found love and loss for the first time in both places, in that different time.

But I only visited.

It’s been years and years. Moved out of reach and time to the suburbs. Career, house, children occupied the whole.

Career moved away. Bank took the house.

Now I live here.

Bikes stolen from a closed garage, car from the street.

People wave and say, ‘Hi’, whenever we pass by. Conversations were always easygoing, informed: liberally political, ‘artsy’, poetical: both young and old, a palette of skin, highly intellectual and not. Pleasant, all.

And the chapbook fingers, older now, still hold me.

I’m home.