I need to see a piece of your history that shows itself worn
I cannot wait to make
acquaintance with your storm drains
To watch their advance toward
your runoff ditches
All the way to your eventual
floodplains
The way you tell me that no man
is an island
…
I feel you might be the first and
last to teach me
Such a valuable lesson
Such becoming, coming into my own
As how to be a peninsula
Surrounded on three sides by the
shrink and swell of another’s body
Obeying their own deep blue
reflected moods and salty norms
I’ve known you for a while, but
I’ve been so long and far away
I really don’t recall what leads
to your downtown, old town, marketplace
I remember there were flower
shops somewhere, as well as musty life scents
Muddy, reverberated experiences
Stretched out all the way to your
bridges
And there likely isn’t a battered
soul, or God complex, uncased, that you don’t hold
See, you have the potential to be
a place
Where it doesn’t matter
How many viruses we computers can
gather
For your power lines stretch
Across your poles which will
stand
Not forever, but longer than I’ll
keep from taking for granted
How you reduce me to
A predictable joke
“Boobies” math’d out across
The upside-down screen of a
scientific calculator
You turn me into the lowest
common denominator
Sitting here
Remembering you
Trying to recall the
Trolley tracks, drug stores,
pigeon nests
And
Street artists
Of your waving, dancing hands.
