This city park sign tells me
Land that once was the highest point
Is now the lowest,
Just as where there once were trees
There now are lakes,
And in a corresponding spot across the river,
Where there once were lakes,
There now are trees.
Curtainless windows at night
Show the clear-cut inscapes
Of once old buildings,
Now white angles and recessed lighting.
On the freeway I passed an old-fashioned RV,
The kind I wished for when I was young
So my family would be safe
Even on yellow-lit highways, with
The impersonal landscape fading
Into oily black mist.
In a trailer like that,
Parked in his mistress’s driveway,
My father locked us one night
So that they could fuck in privacy
Inside her ranch-style house.
When I woke up, my mother
Had the county and her lawyer
Unlocking the door.
So why should I daydream now
About a life on the road?
Last week a solicitor rang the doorbell
Of the home I live in with my husband,
And I looked out the window
Instead of answering.
I saw from the back
An old man in a trench coat and hat
Who could have been my father.
He left a pamphlet damning homosexuals,
Which fell from the lintel
When I opened the door.
How can we live like this?
Maybe by knowing
I live in a city that is one half
Of a whole,
And by knowing the rule here is change-
Where something is removed,
It must also be returned,
Just as I know, with time,
Where I have once been empty
I will someday be full,
And in the places
where I once have received,
I may later give.