Chester Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia, early 1960s
As on a children’s show,
the green-and-cream trolley
with wide windows for eyes,
an emblem above the headlight
like a little mustache,
would come into view—
its doors hissing open, then closed
before it went hiccupping
over the cobblestone tracks.
And down the back alley
past Rusty the Boxer
and Bunky the Beagle,
stirred up along the hairpin fences,
the songs of hucksters
carrying splintered baskets
of freestone peaches
and Jersey tomatoes;
the neighborly chatter
of clothes on the lines.
And the characters we’d meet
along the avenue:
Alex the shoe shiner
and John the milkman;
palsied Mr. Packer
with his handcart of Schmidt’s.
The older boys, who with sycamore pods
they gathered from the curbs
to chalk their lessons—
scrawled in cursive
on the slates of our necks.
Joseph Chelius is the author of two collections of poems with WordTech Communications: The Art of Acquiescence.