The WinCo parking lot at six in the morning

The sourness of well-traveled shopping carts is replaced with that good, earthy smell as I roll through the automatic doors and inhale the fresh morning.
Tiny wheels are much louder against the asphalt just before six.

The parking lot is a wasteland of empty seats after a long party—all open space and scraps of food and paper. A huge crow looks me in the eye like a Western showdown and continues pecking at a used napkin.

I pack paper bags into the popped trunk and mourn the loss of two bottles of Merlot that could not be purchased before seven. Now, the drunks are still red-eyed and trying to stay on a train that will inevitably crash.

I wonder if grapes really taste different if picked at night. To know, I will have to return during reality. For now, I imagine men wearing pajamas in a vineyard.

Sixty-first and Stark

The quiet morning is interrupted by the clicks of turn signals,
and I take a right onto the cold street.
Waiting for a green light against the hopeful gray-blue sky,
I savor the stillness.
Another day indoors is only miles away. I envy the birds.
My mind flies away with them, disappearing between the trees.
And then I go.

Irony is a green and yellow jacket

It's only been seven months and I already feel like the sad, old Oregon dad. As I stroll across Kincaid, I realize that I've never recognized less faces on this campus. I entertain the possibility that my former classmates decided never to graduate, and I might still catch one crossing the street on their way to Rennies. One day, one of my children or nephews will go to this school and when I visit, I'll tell them stories of when I went here, hoping they assume nothing's changed. But in that moment, looking into the eyes of a true college student, I'll know it isn't mine anymore. The campus is theirs now. They know the faces, the professors, the smell of the EMU--and I'll still think it has Panda Express.

Alas, one familiar face. A theater kid, of course. He stops to hug me on his way back from Barry's, propping his longboard against the fence to free up an arm. I accept the hug halfheartedly, wanting it to be more meaningful. But as he jogs down the path to Villard to catch up with his friends, I feel the same. I realize it's not about recognizing my old friends. It's about recognizing myself. The last time my feet touched these sidewalk squares, they were dismounting from bike pedals. My heart would have been beating fast from an exhilarating ride as I fumbled to click off my iPod shuffle, which undoubtedly was playing the perfect cruising song. Maybe Ben Harper or Otis Redding. And i would stuff the headphones into my Oregon jacket, that at the time, didn't make me feel like the sad old Oregon dad.