We have been lulled into dis-remembrance.
We stride through the asphalt city,
unrelenting heat radiating from the simmering un-ground
insulated by our rubber soles
(illusion of invincibility)
We were born into the city and we will die in the city,
where the wild comes to us as a postcard
through the TV, the only place birds of paradise still dance.
All we know are the weeds screaming for life
through the penny cracks in our grit and grime,
All we know are the pigeons with eyes burning red
and toes wrapped and amputated from yesterdays scraps,
their earnest croaks urgent “know! know! know!”
Know the wild for what it once was and could still be!

We do not remember this ground before cement pummeled the
roots of the great trees,
We do not remember how the night sky beamed to starlit cheeks,
Nor how the streams used to run clear and
full to their crests of fish,
We do not remember how great planes shook
with the hooves of the great migrations
of the beasts that knew always their destination —
that home was written in their memories!
“know! know! know!”
Tear up the synthetic web and
find within yourself the buried path,
the trail back to the home your deep soul knows.
Let us become wild again and remember our humble role
in this great wide world,
let us come home, from this concrete dream.