Room in a shanty of desperate near-abandon, not strategic enough to merit being razed for the sterile desolations of progress Too last-legged for restt restoration Residually haunted by layers of living spent from freshness A screen window fire with perforations allows a smudged petticoat of a curtain to tent and collapse at the gusting of a breeze A wood table as nondescript as it is solid, with surface cuppings from wear and scars from knives that kept going after they were finished A Chair once painted vacantly white, now tree ring layered with a smoky film of hardened grease Backwater neighborhood shady with cottonwoods tapping deep, for the river is near Leaves turned aggressive yellow, crisp a-shimmer with a cascade of little wind slappings The same tune heard differently for centuries though one need be a pagan to ta k take note There is a lost license here to do the wageless labors that tend to wax lasting This poem itself if an attempt to go somewhere to be that cannot be returned to Somewhere relatively safe as empires bask in a fullness over-ripe, where privacy dies and secrecy becomes priviledge Swollen and ready to burst by sunshine and rain and ready to burst from inability to count blessings and consolidate success However, this is a neighborhood that would not tend to inspire revenge It's honesties are too simple to be truly complicit It's integrities could never prevail or even di desire to do so It's lance lane is free of asphalt and cannot even justify gravel It may be possible to gain salvation here by ses deserving to be overlooked and passed by... In the coming days when innocuousness is more precious than gold