
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
The Lay of a Milltown Heath
In between the leaves and trash bins,
along the sundered hills, the rising heath
dribbles down its gravel edges to a dying river
in a city where God has been forgotten
and cement angels dazzle the crumbling horizon
while devils play at apathy and skateboarders
ramble over abandoned stairways, and heaven,
an apparition hung like Pinnochio on starless nights
trembles before these modern Giapettos —
when the carnival’s in town — and lights twinkle hopefully.
Some gambol down disfigured streets with bent green signs,
kicking cans and bottles in rambling piles,
like modern tumbleweed drifting lazily over
once sparkling pavement, cracked and mismanaged
by forgotten local gentry astride their perennian mounts,
in pursuit of state funds and someone else to blame
while yellow, white, and red election signs bloom periodically
like modern mnemonics casting streamward glances
as nymphs and dryads dance over shards of bricks
and play for tricks that will list them home.
Beneath the bridge, an old troll naps,
too lazy to drag his human prey into his lair.
Some heros abscond, and as their properties are in abeyance,
the milltown heath in purple glistens with a morning dew,
as actuarial nonchalance permits a withered garden to linger
at the edge of definition and wilderness, and maple sprouts
consort with ash and willow to reclaim a once forested land
these Eden parcels, with Cherubim sentries, stalk eastward
where the sun in it usual course, with Cleon raising spears,
sends hoplites to oppose the Spartan invaders
and Napoleon rashly wind surfs near the shores of St. Helena
plotting his escape.

