I stand astraddle two extremes:

Behind, the public park is jade and bathed
in late day gold, the sun exhaling
glints and ghosts and writing solar glyphs—
a missive to his consort moon, and sighing

            it’s your turn, Love.  It’s your turn.

Solace spreads her blanket in the green
inviting Solitude to lay him down
in days were days before and now
but days were no more picnic
than today.  I know this need.  I know
that need to nurture some nostalgic child
in noctilucent, narcoleptic sleep.  They touch,
their carnal claws concealed, their incest
giving birth to what-once-was,
to might-have-beens.            

            I can’t go back.  I won’t
                       
            go back.

Ahead, the city council’s played its hand;
five acres stripped of life and broken down
to red-clay-dirt and graveled ground.  It hurts
to see the damage, see the catastrophic drop
and shattered skeleton of earth at hand of man.

             Here, there be dragons.
             
             Here, there be death.

Here lies what could have been, behind a stone—
and still as stone, and ancient bones,
the fields have turned to monuments
of mortality.  Creation cries for consciousness
and peace becomes a conscientious
objection to the war.            

            And yet I turn.  And yet I see

a vision of the coming days, a schema to the mayhem
of a broken-open shell.  Even pearls know they were once
the spit and spite of mollusk fault—those soft and fragile
bodies wrapped in calcium and carbonate—until

             I think of what it means:

There is meat to be eaten.  Opalescent truths
to be seen.  And not for sake of eating, seeing, no—
it’s just the cost.  It’s just the price to be paid.
It’s the way our master works His hand, His earth,
His children for His children’s sake.

             There will be ballparks here.
             There will be freedoms here.

             There will be joy.

What looks for now disorder, disarray,
is but foundation to the coming days.
Rebar reaches to the sky, naked blood
of rust against the blue.  Bedrock
sleeps in mounds awaiting breath.
Dozers, backhoes, cranes sit silent
amid the mess.   Everything is

             potential.

You make me see the beauty.  In my mind,
You are a whisper of dancing images
are blossoming, are flowering, are
opening my eyes to see the people–
stands of people full of laughter
and the smiles upon the faces
of all the ones to come.  All
the ones will come–not to see what
You have built, but be together
in one place, and in one mind, and in
one body.  I see You, Lord.  I hear You
writing that love story, writing that love letter:

             It’s the turn, Love

                        It’s the turn.