The old city is beneath our feet—
buried ruins of the pioneers, our ancestors.
For thirty blocks in every direction
we walk, our everyday footsteps like knocks
upon the doors of their empty, abandoned homes.
Just as one hears the sea inside a washed-up shell,
so, too, the streets roar with echoes of the past.
The cracks in the concrete are windows
thrown open to a lost civilization.
It takes a jackhammer to unearth the treasure.
Drilling through the concrete,
like opening a rusted chest of drawers in the attic
in search of relics.
Beneath the asphalt and tangled steel—
a yellowed photo,
a scrap of moth-eaten fabric,
a handful of dust.
The memories of our grandparents
recalled in our walking.