It snowed.
On Belmont Street, the stamped strides of shoe soles
must resemble my ancestors’ walking.
Anonymity feels universal
in these ghosts, generic in their shadows
and similar, like many biscuits baked
or silhouettes against a winter sun.
Aye, the outline must resemble those who
wore petticoats and moustached top hats then.
Those dignified, stiff portraits walked right here;
these cobbles still slid and still stumbled then,
and people still tripped, waddled, tumbled here.
They clutched this wall. They braved this sloping road.
I’ll follow their footsteps who came before
in the frosty haunting of December.
