Last Night, Beneath the Freeway Onramp

i tried to begin a new city.

(this is just another way into the poem
i’ve been meaning to write)

not a skyscraper, not a statue of a founder,
just a reference point, not a radio tower,
not a park where people might share
a cold sandwich, just something

that might have a long way to go,
i’ve learned not to expect things overnight.

i’ve been meaning to tell you
more of these things that have accumulated
like the loneliness of phonebooks
out on the front steps

the constant deliveries
of wheelbarrows of questions,
arriving sans signature, without any notice

for example, do you wonder how many
moths it might take to black out a streetlamp
as you stand underneath, waving upward
into the widening mouth of dark?

which ones are stars? which ones are molars?
and do you sense that unnamable closeness,
as though its been revealed to you

that somewhere, on the outer edge of town,
a great barn door is periodically swung open
where out pour the next vast skylines of footprints
leading off to a blinking beyond?