Walking over the freeway free,
As they say, as the day
And the night sinks like a freezer
That floated, half-submerged
A bit
In the river that isn’t a river at all
Having no source, no mouth
Yet’s still full of eels As the arctic melts
And would, should the moon
present its fullness
Rise and flood and soak the grass-
Grown cemeteries down
To the warping and worm-channeled boards
And that’s when you see it,
The cemetery garden, from
The bridge that spans the freeway when
These sections — both depressed
And rising — are
Scrubbed clean of their cars
And planted
First with: Bollards!
Then with: Trees!
A bench here and there are all we’d need
And it’d be a park
Can’t you just see it?
Stairways leading down
Through the tall embankment grass
And growth to the depressed alignments
Shady now, and quiet
While others rise up from the surface streets
To elevated spans
Soaring masses overhead drip flower-
Dotted vines, the hanging gardens
Of Brooklyn, Queens…
And cut across adjacent streets
To join, absorb their lots like
That cemetery there
By neglected Steuben Park
Oh, you should paint it
Says someone well-intentioned, but
That medium isn’t appropriate!
It must be sculpted, life-size,
Out of freeways, highways, parkways,
turnpikes, interstates and boulevards as well
Just punch some holes in the road
The plants will grow
Bushes, trees, and fountains
And benches are all we’d need
And, if it’s not your cup of tea
If you’d prefer the car-clogged
Cancer machine
To this beautiful thing
That’s just waiting to happen
You must ask yourself this question:
Why am I so disgusting?
Why must I champion such deadly,
Ugly banality
?
The funniest part, however,
Is this: it’ll happen
One way or the other — either
We will construct it
Or it’ll bloom, on its own, across the ruins
Burying us all
