As a I read a Whitmanish
poem about the city, detailing
the “building and breaking”
as she put it, the dirty, gritty
place where big machines
roam like dinosaurs and people
move and breathe and thrive
and are broken like concrete,
I saw a female cardinal fly into
the bush outside my window,
flit and fly off to find her mate
and I gave thanks for my wooded,
rural residence and then a big
garbage truck roared past and
in my pristine, wooded, rural
residence I felt the poem in my
bones, many of which have
been broken like the concrete
streets of New York City,
Detroit and Chicago.