New Citizen

Once a poet of my people wrote: cities of falling light.

Bodies bend low in the field, whisper to the seed, tend to the orchard. On weekdays, the shirt allows for the stoop.

It is labor hardly anyone else wants, and the sea is a long way from here. A Studebaker could not make the return.

Wingtips of leather, fedoras to doff to the ladies walking down the avenue. They’ve been told not to smile but they can’t help themselves.

Oh the curve of the coast, sinuous as the hip of a goddess reclined. In the dark, fruit ripen on trees and you can tell by their scent.

For something so small as a gold tooth, there have been men that are beaten or killed. And the trains that whistle past stitch the names of towns to each other, or the stations of the dead.

At each junction, a chance to feel there might still be a choice.

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