My Town

'This is my town', I say to familiar corners.
Mundane pavements reach for miles into an ancient land that’s decorated with the slim jewels of yesterday’s rain.
My cunning fingers skim the length of skeletal railings,
rattling reams of forgotten memories,
catch at the waists of unsuspecting lampposts.

My town was younger then,
when keen saplings lined its avenues,
Road signs gleamed impatiently,
boards of fluid knowledge running into themselves.
Everything was new and growing and thirsting to learn

We lent against course brickwork,
talked in eager, fluent syllables.
I am too old to posses that iridescent language,
but I remember the sharp, sandy cheek of the school building,
nuzzling at my shoulder blades.

I revisit low walls,
the old walkways of former childhood royalty,
trace a hand across those elevated platforms,
now crumbling cement in the shadow of time’s ghost

Back at the present’s humble altitude
I see my reflection trouble the surface of lonely pools the pavement cries,
struggle to remember myself wearing the lost face of today.

The park recalls my inquisitive tread,
it dissolves the traffic to a minute hum and whispers shyly to itself,
wondering where I have been all these slow years.
Mellow, in the evening lamplight,
I conquer again the bench that was our fortress,
and contemplate what happened to our once mighty domain.