All This Way To Hangout With You

I watch the lit up windows of offices
and apartments from the silver streets
with nothing but my hood
up over top of me.
People are fighting through phone chords
looking out across the traffic
they are free of.

The street lights kick on
and I feel around my pocket
for a dented in harmonica
and play something
old from memory
until somehow it stops working,
and there is nothing but
the metal turning cold.

I walk for two miles
and do not see a single tree
but rusted bridges
hang low nestled in old
roadways being eaten
by the new.
Trains still run through
howling from their whistles
like they are showing up
from older times
to places that still need
their song to be there.

Young wrens are silent
but watch for raptors while they
fight over spilled sunflower seeds
in the shadow of a statue of a general
who never won a war.

An old woman writes a name in red
spray paint on a metal gate
inhaling all the fumes
while in the midst of it,
but I am past her by the time
she has completed it.
It is clear she has long
given up on everything.

An old cook in stained white clothes
empties a dirty pot of old stew into a dumpster
where I’m standing in a cloud of smoke,
and after including him
he tells me who I’m looking for
is not so far away.

After half a day of hitching rides
and walking through the shallow
water stagnant in the street,
I finally find her at the base
of some old birch
that wraps itself around her
like it’s whispering.

It has black leaves and was planted
at the center of a red brick pavilion
long forgotten by the city.
I help her stand and she leans into me
as if she cannot keep her balance.

We stand there for the longest time
and fog rolls in around us and the sun
begins to rise and makes the golden
skies appear between the buildings.

After that I have decided what to tell her
and so quietly I say;
Things will be alright
not because it’s destined
but because we both are strong enough
to make it there.
The place made from the best parts of the past
and the glow of every future
still worth fighting for.

We walk home on the cobblestone
and she helps me up the hillside
where the sidewalk cracks in zigzags
and all the wind chimes
in the neighborhood
ring loud.