Unfamiliar Paths...

Stairways that led to once familiar paths are now obscured by the cluttered layers of time. Each dusting barely perceptible, as the daily celebrations of life leave behind 

layers no more substantial than a spider’s web. 

Successive years, 60 by my count, slowly bury the past,

 even as the ongoing dance celebrates that very thing.

Sun-drenched hills that played host to beggar burros and skeletal dogs in coats stretched too tight, now dominated by expansive homes they like to call haciendas, 

offering a revisionist dream of a time long past.

Dirt blackened, a crippled man drags himself, hand over knee,

down a side street gutter. 

Whimpering odd imprecations in a well-practiced pitch,

on stage for his nightly crawl, weeping gibberish for the crowd. 

Tourists coy, surreptitious with their half-hidden phone cameras, attracted and repelled, chasing a perfect shot without looking like a traffic accident gawker.

Twenty steps behind, on the same street, colorful Mariachis blow lively brass.

Cripples, musicians, a man 60 hats high, food carts perfume the air. Ladies squat comfortably on bright blankets tucked into heavy stone corners, an explosion of color as they hold up bright fabrics and send their toddlers into the crowd with trinkets to sell.

Everyone on stage.

Coming in from all directions at sundown.

A promenade 400 years unchanged,

walking down to the plaza.

Like an old friend, I remembered the face of the Cathedral dominating the square. 

It remained stoic and unchanged even as the many paths leading to its massive doors have become the buried, embellished, and almost unrecognizable descendants,

 of the streets I once walked as a boy.