Stop Signs

Life Poem

You walk
and I walk

over diagrams
made of strands
and chunks of bright colored
chalk,
elaborately planned
on the sidewalk.

Faces appear,
shapes circle around
speckled

like traffic lights,
and stop signs
or secret maps

for looking down
and thinking
back,

not placed there
by cops
for robbers,

but by children
for their fathers

when thoughts
are racing

a little too fast.

more by JOSEPH YOUNG

photograph by Nicolas Gercken