"We have hawks here where we live. They circle and drift as if they have all the time in the world. They're lazy but they understand the wind. They know what the wind’s doing even before the wind does it. The way they tip and turn makes you admire them even as you distrust them. I like to watch them circle and fly the way you might watch someone paint a picture. I don’t know if the sky is their canvas or their palette. Maybe it’s both. The Sky has many faces. Though it’s above the Earth, its relationship with Earth could easily be flipped. We could walk with our feet upon the Sky, with the Sky beneath us. Thus, the folk hero’s name, Skywalker."


two trees      I was born on Jackson Street in South Philadelphia, at 10th Street, in the apartment above my Grandpop’s grocery store. In those days Jackson Street ran from east to west, and it still does. The Delaware River was a mile east of us. The houses were row houses, which means they were all stuck together, although as South Philly row houses go they were fairly large. The houses on the little street behind us, on Dailey Street, for example, were small compared to ours. Our pavements were concrete with small stones embedded in them, and the streets were asphalt which heated in the Summer and gave off the smell of tar. If as a little kid you were running and you fell, that concrete pavement would scrape you up, which is why my Grandmom was always yelling, "Don't run! You’ll hurt yourself!" Halfway down the block towards 9th Street, an old lady who lived next door to my Aunt Mary had a tree growing in front of her house, and a few houses in the other direction from my Grandmom, towards 10th Street, another old lady who we all called Auntie had a tree in front of her house, but that was all the shade we had on the block. Our side of the street, the north side, got all the sunlight, and with no trees we baked. 

My Grandmom’s house had large front windows which let the light in. Grandmom always wanted a tree in front of her house. All the women in the neighborhood wanted trees in front of their houses. But due to some misalignment of neighborhood geomagnetics, perhaps, only those two old ladies had ever succeeded in getting trees to grow. That didnt stop the others from trying. They went at it with something like religious fanatacism. My Grandmom had a local mason bust out a square yard of concrete pavement in front of her house, and he built up a little course or two of bricks to mark off the tiny plot, and then put in some metal rods to which he fastened chicken wire, and the little sapling was ready for life on Jackson Street. My Grandmom was devoted to her baby tree. She planted seasonal flowers in the soil around the tree, those delicate flowers with little round purple and yellow petals as thin as paper. And then she stood guard, because she had local enemies, threats to her tree. Wandering enemies, faceless, nameless. On four legs, with tails. Males. Dogs. Who could stop, and pee, who could pause for one moment and send a quick jet of killing pee over the brick courses, through the chicken wire, and with sure aim apply their brand of baptism to my Grandmom’s beloved little tree.

Grandmom was not content to suffer these assaults. She was not the type to resign herself to unfortunate circumstances. She was well armed with her broom. All the women on Jackson Street, and in South Philly for that matter, at least in those days, spent a certain portion of every day sweeping their pavements. It was part of their daily regimen. It didn’t matter whether anything needed sweeping. They were out there every day, at whatever time, sometimes multiple times a day, brushing down the bare concrete. And they had hoses which they attached to faucets on the wall by their marble steps, and they would wash and scrub these steps with a bucket full of soap and a brush, till the marble shined with well being, and laughed right back at the passing Sun. Grandmom’s broom was an instrument of peace when she used it to bring cleanliness and order to her few square feet of concrete pavement. But when it was inverted and bristling over her head then that ploughshare was beaten once more into a sword, and her broom became the terror of the wandering neighborhood male dogs, who might have only been casually stopping by for a quick and friendly pee. Suddenly their otherwise floppy ears shot straight up to the sky. A square shaped screaming old woman had appeared out of nowhere and with terrible speed was descending the steps and in a foreign tongue damning them to the underworld.

The dog I’m thinking of had no idea what was going on. The front door of the house to his left and a little behind him had busted open, and out came Grandmom. He didn’t even have time to quit his pee. But his momma dog hadn’t raised no fool. He took off with his hindquarters low, and never looked back till he got to Frankie Branca’s house, and even then he kept on tearing down the street and finally turned the corner at 9th Street and was out of sight. No telling when he stopped runnning. Probably not till he got to Snyder Avenue. Grandmom wasnt in any shape to give chase on foot, but her speedy language followed him long after he disappeared. I didn’t understand Italian or Sicilian. I doubt my Grandmom used salty lingo like sailors do because that wasnt her style. Whatever it was she said, I’m sure it had weight and grit to it. The dog probably understood what she said better than I did. Once she was sure he was gone she lowered her broom, and then she turned to me and patted me on the head, telling me I was a good boy, like she always did. And that it would soon be lunch time, and for me to come in and eat in a little while. Grandmom never did manage to get a tree of any size to grow in front of her house.