Always enough

On their walk home after school,
the middle school kids foraged among green ankles
in a patch of sour grass,
Don't swallow-Just chew, says the boy with braces
who spotted the little cache and reported it.

A lone girl sits criss cross applesauce
on the sidewalk in the shade of a pepper tree,
she wipes her brow, a paperback book splayed
in her lap.
She has never heard of a broken spine.
She doesn't look up-her ride must be late.

At the bus stop
a  stubbled man asks a teen
for the Time,
then asks the youth why he is out early,

I go to the Academy.
I have to go to work, he
explains.
How I remember those days,
retorts gruff with derisive smirk
Not the same, I'm sure,
the man reassures-
Academy.
Is this bus always late?

A crow hops next to the bench
looking sideways
every so often, adjusting his position
on cracking a tough nut,
or breaking a date.

Either way they look
too little
too late.



Painting by Boris Kustodiev (1911) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.