When did the neighborhood lose its innocence? she wonders. She notices the twisted trunks of century-old shrubs. In her day "[she] tried not to stare / in the open door of the beer joint / on my way to Linda's house," imagining what it was like "lifting heavy thick mugs, / sloshing the counter / with bubbly brown sin." Instead, she and Linda sat "beneath a sycamore . . . almond arms bared, jeans rolled thin / above the knees. Whispered news / Suzanne's parents getting a divorce"; hope "it isn't so."

"We've circled back," she tells her husband. Their daughter has left for college. "We've learned that pausing helps us see. / We bend toward, and cherish, / the few things we're sure of."

Marilyn Bushman-Carlton has published in CityArt Poetry on the Bus, Earth's Daughters, Exponent II, Iris, and Prize Poems of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She is a graduate of the University of Utah and has taught poetry workshops at Pioneer Craft House. She and her family reside in Salt Lake City.