In my Heart
I know this land,
Know these waters:

Box Elder Creek,
Channeled, straight,
Flanked thickly
With willows;

Tributaried by
The older winding
Black Slough,
With its confluential
Marshes, and fields
Where in Autumn
We sought wild fowl,
In Winter, Solace.

In the deepest oldest
Portions of my Heart
I know these:

Knew them in
Days of Peaches,
Summers of Cherries--
The Old Seventh Ward--
Before the rocket plant,
Before the steel mills,
Before the freeway,
The billboards,
And the wearhouses,
Before Seventy-Five
Miles per hour:

When access was
The fascination
With a shaded lane;
When land and water
Were another value;
And home much less
A state of mind.

06/03/2003