The Peace of Great Cities

The peace of great prairies be for you.

Listen among windplayers in cornfields,

The wind learning over its oldest music...                

 (from Harvest Poems - Carl Sandburg)

The Peace of Great Cities – A Response to Sandburg

Dawn and the big-bellied shopkeeper sweeps his sidewalk

with priestly focus all the way to the curb

turning the altar cloth of welcome over the railing

as he remembers his grandfather doing in the old country.

He sells you the neighborhood gossip

for which you'll gladly take home an extra pork chop

for the chance at another five minutes of belonging.

Mid-morning and the fresh-faced girls in platform shoes

pause in their shopping to drop a coin into the open case

of the bearded street singer

whose dreams they now inhabit.

His image for their quarter buys them restlessness,

until, when they catch sight of their reflection in the shop window

they have forgotten who they were supposed to be.

Noon and the untold stories are

borne through stone archways by aproned Hestias

bearing trays of steaming soup

which fuels the old men at small tables

who slurp and speak of past adventures

bringing down the drawbridge over a moat of solitude

until both belly and heart are satisfied.

Tea time and the thin waitress with the dark eyes

who sees behind your street smile

and remembers that you like your sandwich on rye

and that your mother was ill recently

makes you want to be suddenly better

and leave twenty percent tips for every stranger

who ever filled your cup.

Twilight and the soft rains smooth the sharp sounds

and stones of the city

turning them into godly reverie.

From my table under the tattered green umbrella

I see all these characters moving as if in a great novel

living among them, I add my breath to the collective sigh,

the wind in the leaves,

the city breathing.                                                                             

R.D. Armstrong 5/7/99