Our (Flat) Town

I dig it in our flat town.
I know that if Don is at
a party, he's almost definitely
on the same floor as me, namely
the first. If Megan and
Mark finally do make it out
for their yearly excursion into
the world, they really couldn't
get much higher than the second
floor; I suppose if they really
tried, they could get as high as the
attic. If Rachel is going to do
yoga, it's probably on the ground
in some park. And I feel it does me
good to know that all my friends
are constantly, with me, pretty
much down to earth. No one's
cavorting on the 72nd floor
somewhere, no one is towering
above me, no one is ever really
out of sight. I feel like Thoreau
in his hummock on the porch of
the house he built, the home he
finally found, beaming, with all
of Portland stretching out before
me. I don't need to be everywhere
to sense it all stretching out,
to hear the trains coming home,
to know the castaways and outlaws
are still longing for something
they can't name, to wonder at all
the names being spoken across
the city all at once. All the names
and the lives that go with them,
the torture and bliss, the cravings
and satisfied sighs, the lost hopes
and senseless dreams, fairy tales,
and fictions. Here among the bridges,
those stories lay out plain and flat,
simple and timeless, forever and a day
in their endlessly unfolding, ceaselessly
becoming more of our flat town.

(2008)