Poem for Display in a Vacant Lot

The concrete dreams of bindweed & beggar-tick, burdock & wineberry, gravid mosquito mothers, copperheads, a wild rose equipped with grappling hooks.

The concrete wants to be loved, not merely walked upon. It wants to go home with you, clinging to your pants leg, or at least take a bite your skin will remember.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The concrete was our gift to an unimproved land where woods & weeds ran riot. At best, we might condescend to preserve some open space,

a light-green stripe across the grid. But the pavement, too, begins to bulge open. There are no motels in this vacancy. The flag of our alienation goes down to kudzu.