Skyscrapers in Your Backyard

Everything is education,
Parents.

The way you brush your teeth
Up and down,

Or side to side is
Seen and emulated by your little ones.

The way you sit in traffic
Fuming,

Is it polite to curse
The suffocation of skyscrapers

Growing,
In your backyard?

The world is watching
From the back seat.

So you might say,
The heavy traffic gives us more time to draw,
Honey, and

The windows need to be shut tighter
So we can hear Mr. Mozart better!

While the hungry honk
In heat and shadows because

Brooklyn development is
In your veins
Seething now,

The flyers in your mailbox
Brought it to you yesterday.

Or you might begin the story,
Do you remember when,
Honey,

Way back when, back
Before the skyscrapers blocked the sun?

You used to play here
By that tree,
Do you remember the yard?

(The one they mauled
To give more space to
The developer, too hard to explain here)

Why honey,
It’s all a nightmare to me now,
A different kind of yard.

No not grass,
I can’t seem that find that here,
(Too small with no
Convenient parking)

And honey,
I can’t remember how it looks in the flyer,
Or how this nightmare actually ends.

The noise is deafening in your ears
As it pumps the rage to your brain.

In thumps and bumps and you run not walk
Back to find your yard, back to find your house,

Back to Brooklyn where Brooklyn once stood,
There was a time when the man in uniform could not take it away,

Your house your life your yard when small stuff mattered but it’s too late,
There are skyscrapers growing here now.

You lost your track you think
You lost the tracks
Beneath the yards someplace.

From the back seat
Comes a quizzical stare,
More unbearable questions:

Where did you go Mommy?
Back to those yards again?

No, you mutter lying,
Don’t you just love that?

Your veins popping from your forehead
As you squint through the window shield
Looking to find Brooklyn,
Trying to remember it as it once was?

Now you know,
You did lose track,
You lost the distant tracks that lie green
Beneath the backyards of your mind and,

Now, you have skyscrapers clouded in your mind, but

Everything is education,

Parents.

The way you brush your teeth

Up and down,

Or side to side is

Seen and emulated by your little ones.

The way you sit in traffic,

Fuming.

Is it polite to curse

The suffocation of skyscrapers growing

In your backyard?

The world is watching

From the back seat.

c. 2008 Graziella Radici