WALKING TO SCHOOL

I remember as a child I would actually walk to school (no we were not too poor to afford transport we just did it), it wasn't a long walk 15 odd minutes on a path through the jungle entering the school from the "dumpster end" (about twenty yards full of the school's trash; the part that we mostly ran through holding our breath). I decided to walk the path again yesterday Chip my dog lies somewhere here in his last resting place a free soul in a free place, 12 years have gone by since I was here last, so many years later it seems so much shorter, the greenery has thinned the grass doesn't seem as green as it used to be the mountain seems like an older man with thinning hair , there is a swanking new bypass with shiny cars whizzing by flanking my path as it looks on, the raspberry bushes that we spent our childhood summers hunting for berries, have given way to construction; concrete and trash flank my childhood path from both sides, the small stream that flowed through the jungle a worthy opponent in the rains has now stopped serving nature and is serving the needs of the city instead. As I come to the end of my walk and step onto the asphalt I realize that the path that carried an unwilling child to school is no longer the same, progress they say I cannot help but feel a little wistfull.