Esplanade Avenue

It was on Esplanade Avenue
where the stars are fixed,
not like here,
with all that forward thinking
and all the glass that stretches up to the sky
in this never ending shine
changing the structure,
the molecules
and how they fit around all that brick.

It was on Esplanade Avenue
where the rust is creeping
oxidizing, where the water table
is right below our feet, 18 inches
and we can dig our way out of this basin
to the swamps where the last dinosaurs
roll and roll and roll.

It was on Esplanade Avenue
where down the street is a house
built 212 years ago, a safe house
for a little king
a warrior,
it is waiting for him still,
with crumbling stone and Dvorak
and we are raking our metal fingers down
Tin Pan Alley for the new American God
of Progress.

It was on Esplanade Avenue
where the old Gods still hide,
ducking behind broken shutters
and spraypaint,
down railroad tracks into blood red skies
under heat
and in whispers
and in little packets of promised treasure
bone, hair, stone, paint.
They are starved but they are still worshiped.

It was on Esplanade Avenue
under the fixed stars
that time stopped
where a wild woman
a possessed thing
raked the ground
hauled up the dirt of someone’s garden bed
and hide your secrets.