History Lesson, Athens, Georgia

I’m running down Antebellum Row,
Doric-columned Greek houses all painted
with the city’s last stash of 1849 white-zinc
pigment. It’s the straight stretch of Milledge
Avenue, named, like six other streets, after
1802 governor John, who left Heights,
Terrace, Extension, Circle, Court, and Place
in our midst, confounding tourists trapped
for days at a single intersection. 7:37 AM,
July tenth and by mile three the soupy air
has coated my tongue with the taste of
young water oak leaves, trees that have lined
our streets for a century and now die one
by one, from the male attribute of heart
rot—fungal infidelity. My friend Bill,
town arborist, says water oaks spend their
first fifty years growing and their last fifty
dying but I’m unsure how this maps onto
the human storyline. At mile four, I run over
a man-hole cover dated 1916, Cobbham Iron
Works, and stoop to pick up the blue and white
surgical mask caught on the lettering—third
one this run, because history is written
by both the standing and the lost.