Every day I walk this path

with the cracks in the sidewalk.

Not the ones meant to be there,

but the ones from rain and sun and footsteps

beating down day after day

with a drum-like beat.

Every day I get pulled to the chain-

link fence, to the little inhabitants of it,

little flittering bodies that pose in the diamonds,

making a moment-in-time home of it

before they’re off to a new scene.

Sometimes I wish I were the birds,

fluttering around with no real purpose.

I flutter every day, but not with real abandon,

but instead with panic and the sense of

how little time there is in a day.

I get close to the heart of the campus

and once again am drawn to the size

of not only the buildings,

but also the size of the amount of people.

Sometimes I find the buildings more interesting

than the people I pass. The buildings have

history, purpose, secrets

inside their walls.

The buildings hold many

people, who hold their own secrets and lessons,

and this makes buildings so much more important.

The buildings are silent but say so much

with their splendor and enormity.

People around me though,

never are quiet. They talk-

on phones, to people,

to themselves. Do they think

that we can’t hear?

Or do they just not care?

Do they realize that in the moment I pass,

that their life has become entangled in mine,

if only for a moment.

I pass a street vendor,

who sells to those passing by.

He makes a living standing there

and it goes against everything I was taught

when I grew up learning

that you had to go to college,

to make a living.

But he paints every day,

because he loves it,

and uses it to survive.

And that thought is as abstract

as his paintings along the walk,

to my so formally structured brain.

It grows dark early now,

and I like the darkness much more

than the light that blinds.

But I realize with great sadness once again

that I can’t see the great

expanse of sky filled with little twinkles

like I can when I’m home.

And I miss the immensity of it.

They way that it made me feel small.

The way that it reminded me

that I’m a mere human

and nowhere near as grand as I wish.