Concrete
The city above us reaches higher and higher
tipped at the top in all its glory with
iconic, prickly, spires,
as long as air rights permit it.
Build, tear down, rebuild, as the wheels below spin round
in sync with the people who dream,
and the unbridled greed.
Sidewalks, though, remain the same,
i.e., concrete
-people come here to compete,
and they prefer the ground
static, unforgiving and mundane
-the cracks house stunted plants,
squat down low, you might see
ants- too.
People are ants when you are on the 100th floor,
and disappear if you go high enough, or if you forget them.
Back on the ground you
might notice concrete, light grey,
doesn’t hide dirt well, but people barely care
-would you continually step
on a light-colored shirt?
and furthermore, is a visual foil to a
galaxy of flattened gum wads,
jet black- gum wads that remind me of opaque black holes
up above the sky.
There are innumerable pebbles too,
studding the walkways largely unaccounted for
by the naked eye. We grid our concrete like
we grid the city -the geometric dividing lines
are narrow spaces like mini streets
-if we are Godzillas, then OCD Godzillas
avoid these streets, but if trying to catch
a bus, that all goes out the window.
Concrete’s biggest foe may be jackhammers
-shuddering in their presence, succumbing
to brute, deafening force -a staccato berating
beat, like an amplified version of the concrete
pounding of feet, of people and pets,
or an even more amplified version of the
gentle tapping of grounded pigeons.
Copyright ©
Brian J Potter
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