Years later, you visit the town
of your childhood and find
the fields and woods are
parking lots and streets. Your hide-
and-seek pasture has become
a trailer park. A turnpike splits
your old neighborhood. All afternoon
you prowl the sidewalks for one
remembered face. Nobody you know
passes you. The human race
has forgotten World War II
and the Great Depression. Strangers
crowd the boulevards, and the fumes
from engines dirty the snow. Even
the oaks in the square have been pulled
from the earth - they've been replaced
with boxes of plastic geraniums.
Tenements rise like fungi
along the hillside. You soon
get lost. Not one person stops
when you ask directions. At dusk,
a cop on his beat becomes
suspicious. He shakes you down.
Your only alibi: you've come to see
your hometown. But the cop
is young and inexperienced. he has
no use for aliens and old men
who lie. You keep telling him
how the world was once. He shakes his head,
probes you with his stick. He tells you
to get out of his town and to be quick.