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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.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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