Even Slums Have Parks

I walked as a grey kid lost in his own hometown streets. When my slow mind began to see more clearly it saw brick dusted air and a sunlight blotched with yesterday's scabs. There were small parks in that part of the city, where the shabby slept and fornicated, a wilted grass was dotted with used condoms and patchworked with dog urine. We thought it fine to explore those sleazy acres parents behind us, we running ahead. as if we were discovering paradise. The clouds would give way, and a light fell upon this new world of ours as if newly painted. For a while, we kids saw each other as playmates and not intractable rivals. Later, back in the crowded reek of the crumbling tenements, we grew soul-blind once more. We hoped that the God we had been instructed to love occasionally watched over us, that perhaps once a week He checked us all out, from the far side of a city park.