Behind the Wire, Old Lot

Where the community garden used to be,

all bright rows and hopeful dirt,

there's just a field of dry weeds now.

The fence, of course, is still there.

Chain-link, rusty, some stubborn bindweed

still clinging to the diamond mesh.

It separates nothing from nothing,

but it used to hold back the street

from small, careful miracles.

Now, it just rusts,

a boundary for an empty space,

a memory of green that’s gone to seed.