A Native

This place, this now, you can see it

you can see what it is too, beside

the quiet border you trace around it

this is a home town too, among other things

among everything else. I was born here,

in this empty lot, that was a hospital

in a room with one rectangular window

packed with people I would never see again,

including my mother. Cities are cruel that way

but not all together so, there is a mother here

in the rubble and the dust, and as far

as I ever got I came back to it,

I learned to love it

to love myself in it.

The west was won in a saloon

over a poker hand

and a screaming slot machine.

This place remembers even the drinks that were spilled

the out turned pockets, and moment before

the wheel stopped turning and any number

was a winner…