Short Towpath Poems

A lifeless house sparrow lays dead
In the middle of the towpath
As if asleep on a green sheet;
Its body still warmed by the sun
That one could mistakenly guess
Its demise was moments before
My arrival except that its
Only exposed eyeball was gone
Indicating an earlier
Death. No decomposers arrived
As yet, usually the maggot
Flies are the first at a death scene.
I picked up the feathery corpse
And buried it beside the path....

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The sun-bleached exoskeletons 
of old dead trees stand like sentries
along the towpath riverfront
exfoliated and gangling.
In a former age they stood tall,
grandiose to all passerby’s
but they too are dead to recall
their once impressive colossi.
Eventually these remains
will meet their final destinies:
to fall-never to rise again-
among forgotten progenies;
yet many springs have passed since then 
each sprouted trees, time and again....

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The Dark Delaware on my left
The defunct canal on my right
And me in the middle of both.
I’m heading south on the towpath
Peddling my hybrid all the way.
As to where? I haven’t a clue
It doesn’t really matter where
Just as long as I’m still able to
Peddle along this special place.
I’ve biked here since I was a kid.
Two things have changed since that time:
Back then I had a three speed Schwinn
Today I have twenty-one speeds;
Back then I was young, today… old....

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