'April Sweepers': A prose poem by Oliver de la Paz

In early April street sweepers come to clean debris from our block and my son would run to windows and watch their brushes turn and churn, engine noise a low grumble slightly shaking the house’s foundations. We, together, watch as the old sludge of winter fades in watery streaks. It’s as though the machines paint a new city, moving past the cars.

In his delight, my son tracks maple leaves — something swift and uncaught from the fall when the city was a different coat of paint. He watches them churn upward into what he calls the sweeper’s mouth. The leaves once frozen in hunks of ice are now free, easing their way into the bristles to be made into something new. And how the tang of metal and salt lingers in the air after the April sweeper passes.

As I watch my son marvel at how swift and clean change happens, I think of the way the ice had bejeweled everything just a few weeks ago, and how I had bundled him up, his face wrapped in scarves. How he too was bound, his hands in pockets, boots sloshing through the slush to whatever matters at the moment. But now the starlings are back, picking away at the feeders. Now the return of the clean curb and the gutters whisked of winter’s traces.

We step outside to see the street made new. Where once the ruin of salt and city grime, we see flashes of mica from wet stone. Light rebounds off the cleaned pavers and all is brightness. Together we move, unfettered by our winter gear into a city that is also newly free. How patient we were for this. How sure we were, knowing that delight, sometimes, is on time.

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, and the author and editor of several books, including his newest work, "The Diaspora Sonnets." He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: 'April Sweepers': A prose poem