Sky blue holes in the clouds

This was the Sunday afternoon when there were sky blue holes in the clouds when I left the house.

Near Einstein Brother’s Bagels, I walked up the sidewalk

and saw two college men approaching me, talking animatedly.

As I passed, one said with a shake of his head,

“He went up the stairs and he didn’t come down.”

A few steps farther, a young husband, pushing an empty stroller said,

“Let’s turn,” as his wife, holding their child in her arms said,

“Don’t you want to go in and look at the toys?”

Farther up the street I heard the echoes

of the maraca girl from somewhere behind the parked cars on the far side of the street.

When she stopped shaking them – that is her maracas -

a woman talking to another woman walking near me  said,

“I must have pushed the button too hard.”

In front of Central Bank, two girls were trying to find the chords on their ukuleles.

The one with the purple face paint asked me if I knew any Neil Young,

she had a song on the tip of her tongue but she just couldn’t get it started.

She started to sing a song with the words “deep sea diver” in it instead.

As I looked away I heard my name.

 I turned to the sound to see my wife driving by, smiling out of her opened car window,

having just had coffee with a  friend.

A neighbor walking with his wife paused at the light to ask if I thought it would rain.

I pointed out that the holes in the clouds were filling in, but I didn’t know.

On the far side of the intersection, I picked up my pace so that they could continue their own conversation.

Across the bridge, as I was looking out over the Bowersock hydro plant construction

to watch the river,  

a young mother, pushing a stroller built for one but

containing a  young girl and her baby sister,

whom I had just passed moments earlier,

spilled – that is the stroller spilling the girls  -  

at the junction of the sidewalk and the levee.

I didn’t see it, but I heard the baby cry for a few seconds.

As I turned, her mother scooped her up and said,

“That didn’t work so well.”

The baby stopped crying and smiled at me.

I was heading back down, when the robot in the stoplight said,

“Walk sign is on to cross Sixth Street,

walk sign is on.”

The ukulele girls were offering free face painting as I walked by.

In front of Central Middle School a young woman was carrying

a large white puppy across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

She set him down on the grass and he responded to the tug on his leash.

It was sprinkling, but there were blue sky holes in the clouds again.

I went up the stairs of my front porch

and I didn’t come down.

I made pizza with my wife instead.