Only Twenty Years

ONLY TWENTY YEARS Who can know the future of twenty years And discount the dim offerings of Gateshead? What 12 year old can imagine The emptiness of prairies in Montana Or smell from fifty miles away Russia’s boreal forest Or feel the rocky fossils of Donegal Resisting the Atlantic combers Or standing on a windswept Gateshead corner Can hear the beauty of old Quebec French Or collecting coal pieces in cobbled streets of Teams Can feel the blueness of flax fields in Alberta And crossing the Tyne bridge Can see over the Roebling bridge On the Ohio at Cincinnati?