The steam still comes off
the
steel mill,
The sun still glints across
the wire barbs,
But the asphalt lot is empty,
roped
off.
The battles that were fought here
against
the real
Needed to be fought more than the carnage
needed
to be saved,
Somehow, although it seems a total waste
now,
the scrap swept into piles.
Late sun will draw the eye to what was once
a
field of gold
Where children learned their needs
could
not be met
And dreams were to be chased elsewhere
than the
echoing walls of day.
A few still return, as the freight cars rest
orange
in the sunset,
To homes that haven’t changed
and
cars that they call vintage,
Where the verities play out the same
though
the rules are in another language.
Still, the pink sky on the baseball field
stirs
a feeling that’s unnameable,
Unaccounted for by the computer mind
that
orders their stray whims
To something interesting and hopeless,
what
won’t require a moon.
The cravings start at sundown for the children
who
don’t know why they can’t have what they want,
For they know how to make everything stop
before
the thing their parents never had.
A shiver goes down through the neighborhood
that
feels, but has no way to say.
As the Gods are picked off one by one,
and
the neighbor’s boy coughs blood,
And the new divisions ask for their donations
as
they march invisibly through the house,
And the logos shine in brilliant white across the city
as
before, as always.
With so much to remember and only so much
they
can forget,
One never knows the time the lights will turn off
for the night,
But there’s comfort for them that there's everyone else
as
the covers come back down.
They dream of different things than they’ve been told,
more
real for being seen,
One of many things they’re not supposed to know
but
yet they do.
It all goes in that general word called God
that
sounds below the soil.
And they wake remembering nothing
but
they are safe and loved
And the light that shifts and dances
can
be followed.
They inherit all the things of the world without knowing,
because they're strong enough to carry them off.
