A Path Is Made By Walking
                       ─for Mike Sleadd

Surely, this is one of the nearly extinct
avian citizens that never existed,
who never soared over the uprising
of this great city, but finds itself satisfied
to walk on three legs through
vast wilderness parks, strolling
around its wide lakes that reflect
the high stories of buildings shouting tales
of ascendance, its broad boulevards kept
meticulously clean of the debris that is
passed down from generation to generation.

So nothing new is expected as all
the exceptions are quickly deposited
in every street corner receptacle,
all the exclusions quickly excluded
so all the street signs are removed,
all directions inclusive of all other directions,
all the incongruities quickly worked into
the design of the next monumental
construction project, and all the contradictions
cancelling out further contradictions,
lost and found identical, leaving the city
a heap of rubble and this avian citizen alone
and lonely walks to the city limits toward
the destruction of the next improbable city.

—By Walter Bargen

Singing Bone Press
Columbia, SC
jerred.metz@gmail.com