For Joe

 The land remembers

Look under the city street

Down under the cracked pavement sprouting the most resilient weeds

Down under the water pumping life through the city

Look down into the darkness, home to rats, raccoons, and

Other things that do not have names, just secrets

Down, down to the rushing, roaring trains

The screaming brakes and squealing rails

Their mighty engines are the gods of the city

My first love once told me the dirt remembers

Each foot that ever tread on it

And I wonder if it remembers car tires and bike wheels too

Roots that grow through it and shovels and machines that rend it

Beneath the city there is earth and the earth remembers.