o' cinereous city  
give to me your blacktops
where on hard white asphalt
impenetrable, grave and square

we play hardscrabble with toughs
who huddle in groups
hanging keds that swing in the air

a pitch of blank gray
a field of kicked stones
ashen, barren
the end of confusing friends

but still a place to go
and run and run and run
when all at once, filled with children laughing, crying, jumping, stumbling, climbing, bouncing,
announcing life in eternal screams - - let me play!