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Where Do We Live?
i.
The children have drawn
a city of chalk.
Brightly colored outlined buildings:
REPAIR CENTER, GAS STATION,
GROCERY STORE, BANK.
When the rain comes,
the stores will bleed together.
They might as well
have chalked the out-
lines of their bodies
to commemorate
a time when chalked
cities were real
and imagination no crime.
ii.
A skyline
remembered
is as real
as one changed
by time
or tragedy.
iii.
From the Beltway,
the Mormon Temple
gleams
like the Emerald City
which for years I was told,
and therefore believed,
it was.
iv.
My grandmother believed
in a heavenly city
with gates of pearl
and streets of gold.
I could see it as she described it,
as real as anything.
v.
Children and the very old know what we grow to forget:
that the only places we ever really inhabit
are those our imagination has rendered real,
the cities whose lights never dim.
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