Visionary travelers can’t resist 

seeing themselves living

in every new city that they trade steps

for memories they won’t want to recall.

Such a concentration of people it takes

to lose ourselves among 

everyone and everything else!

Depending on their length of stay,

the realization always hits them

around the time their imagination dissipates

like the retreating steam of rain in summer

on the beleaguered pavements there.

So many great things can only exist together

for as long as it takes to acknowledge the work it took

to bring them within each other’s orbit.

These transient entities 

wrapped in their delusions

ask only of how they could 

bring about their visions

instead of questioning

why they should even want

something best distilled

in doses they can control. 

Discussions of cities seem only to follow

concepts of congestion and collapse and calamity

after opportunities for gathering and engagement.

When these travelers come to the end 

of their thought-journeys of haven-harbors,

the fleeting prospect that 

cities don’t make sense

doesn’t matter when they know

that these constructions 

don’t need to coalesce 

in the minds of those within

as long as they remain

magnets for both good and bad.

So the miracles continue to stew 

around the centers of our human hearts each day

that our cities prove that we can build domes of kindness against the world.