It was a neighborhood street scene,
something that might have been an illustration
in Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn,
large houses set back from a dirt road lined with trees,
picket fences, a narrow brick sidewalk,
a scene from the late 19th century,
but it looked so familiar to me
I couldn’t stop staring at the page.
This was many years ago
when I was in elementary school,
and the drawing was in a textbook
we were using,
but I’ve never forgotten the feeling
that I knew this place,
this age of history.
It’s happened again
several times,
usually in an art gallery
as I slowly walk through the rooms,
stop suddenly in front of a painting,
unwilling to go on,
mesmerized by the image
of a place where I never lived,
in a time when I could not have lived
or did I?
