Wild Tarnished Places.

Wild Tarnished Places.

There are wild tarnished places
in the vacant lots between
tamed by abuse and neglect
and refuge for smaller creatures.

Who live beside us
finding us the more
oblivious carnivore, the more
careless hunter.

Unaware of the jack rabbit,
the skunk, the porcupine
the spoiled deer wandering between
wilderness and our backyards.

So much waste, yet
a place of quiet dust
even as we blunder by on walks
our eyes on marked paths.

The kids on their bikes
they know of these places
unfinished forts, bicycle jumps
and broken lightsaber branches.

They fill this space for awhile
with noise and torn litter
and then leave it, abandoned
to quiet and nurturing neglect.

These wild tarnished places,
always there beside us
out of sight and out of mind,
forsakened and alive.