Grady Chambers

The service must have just ended,
because the boys in their dark suits

and the girls in their skirts and dresses
were spilling through the open doors

as I walked home, Sunday
in the late morning, wet light shining

on the church’s stucco wall, the heavy white blossoms
nodding from the rain just stopped, and the wet earth

surprisingly soft
each time I stepped from the sidewalk to the bordering grass

to avoid someone on the crowded pavement, and I was thinking how
Brooklyn was

nearly a year behind us now, each day’s long walk
to the long wait for the late train

to take me to work, the small apartment with the black balcony
where the red birds gathered

and one or the other of us sat smoking
in the evening, or after we had argued,

and were we happy now, I wondered—
turning up the front steps—

but hadn’t we gotten everything we’d wanted?

Poetry