The Peace of Great Cities
by Rebecca Armstrong
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