We Wash our Sidewalks

She'd been there when I walked by two and a half hours before, washing off of the cement walk all the sand carefully laid down for walker protection last week. She's made some progress, but as I walk down the stairs toward her I hear the sound of sand gumming itself up in my shoe tread, and I know she's fighting a losing battle. We are out of doors, after all. The water she's been spraying is now running down the lower sidewalks, making little tunnels in the sand and mud caked up on the other walkways. And since that sand isn't going anywhere, more students like me will track it over more sidewalks all over campus, and I begin to wonder why we ever bothered to do this in the first place.