napowrimo #5

Are you sure it’s the only thing
you don’t like
about living in the city

not being able to see stars?

The smell of wet concrete
is on my list, midnight sirens
so many cars, so many sins
seeping down drain holes

disguised, trash piled up
for collection, billboards littering
golden horizons smug
with smog, red lights, angry bus
drivers, latte stands on every corner
telephone wires in all my pictures
of the sky, a million strange faces
that don’t smile, a thousand
cardboard houses, cardboard signs,
empty cups shaking, overpriced everything

a hundred cars that pass by the old man beside
the road in his broken down car
no one stopping to help…

Are you sure you don’t miss the smell
of rain-drenched forests, the music of stifled streams
the easy, slow tempo of having nowhere particular
to go

cricket sounds, and wide open spaces?

empty for what we can’t carry inside us

Are you sure
that’s all
you miss?