One would think there would be little poetry there,
in you, a nest of the Earth between road and track
and line of suburban houses, but I found it

and you were mine. My footprints were the only human-made
things in the dirt and snow for a while.
Then came the sticks and the ribbons.

I hated them, but I learned soon
to ignore the things, though I longed to rip them up.
I knew that your death was coming.

Still, I loved you, in the springtime and the fall.
I only knew you a year and a half, really—
two winters, one summer, one fall, two springs.

It was like we held hands in the hot dry days
when dust and dew dried on the tree-leaves
and the clouds in the sky seemed frozen in place.

You were all of it, the beautiful and bad,
all that was there, and to me it was all lovely:
you were tall trees, open fields, grasshoppers

and we’d lay on the grass and spin tales.
I’d study you and you knew I loved you.
The days slipped quick and not nearly long enough

and then, one warm May day, I lost you.
The bulldozers ripped into your flesh.
I screamed because you could not.

I have not dared to go out since then
but I see the spectacle from the road we drive.
They are building a prison on your skin

(really a bowling alley, but I am locked out the same)
so I feel dead to you; really, you’re the deceased
kissing the air and sky with trees:

once you did but now, I hate it
you’re a failed paradise – you’re gone, gone –
you’re a bird with no wings or a child without a soul.