When
we went out this afternoon the rain was still falling and all the
leaves down 7th Street glowed as though it overflowed from the street to
the dirt to the roots and up the trunk, into the branches, out the
stems and into them. I had seen the street so many times, not thinking
much of it. The dreary cars, the ramshackle sidewalk. Houses of
neighbors we didn’t know. But there was something in the contrasting
light, and in the alley of trees, and in the way the street opened at
the intersection with 8th Avenue, that reminded me of a place I’d seen
in dreams.