In Neighborhoods Across America

round herds of houses

brick tenements crawled over by ivy

where babes and elders alike once spent

their sunshine on imagining

another life

There was always a big tree

knotted and tall, presiding

over crawling grasses, bent

as if daily brushed back

by combing winds

Where once the day was in its eld

daring to begin to sink into horizon

causing windows of spilled

starlight swiftly to close

on the grasses and dappled leaves

little eyes would look up

watching the slow spill

of floating foliage turning in,

the harsh rumble of the rush

hour of little consequence

to them the mere rumble

of wandering beasts,

cold hearts needing a spark

to start, lurking around loudly outside

the gates, beyond the boundaries

of their little Eden

What happened?

The wandering beasts have come and gone;

we, supposedly safe, watched from windows

our tall trees become toothpicks

for the toothy machine

Now we remain guiltily huddled 

beneath the bricks, closed

doorways securely fastened

against the imminent lurking

Danger, as diffuse as the winding

white threads that once crept

from the twin chimneys

where beneath the elders and babes spend

their little lives imagining

a big , knotted tree, an oak or an elder—

no fires for youths to dream

beside, to be freed by; no crackling

hearths only cold cinders waiting

for a spark

by: Raymond Alistair