| 
 | 
| In the empty lot - a place | 
| not natural, but wild - among | 
| the trash of human absence, | 
|   | 
| the slough and shamble | 
| of the city's seasons, a few | 
| old locusts bloom. | 
|   | 
| A few wood birds | 
| fly and sing | 
| in the new foliage | 
|   | 
| --warblers and tanagers, birds | 
| wild as leaves; in a million | 
| each one would be rare, | 
 | 
| new to the eyes. A man | 
| couldn't make a habit  | 
| of such color, | 
|   | 
| such flight and singing. | 
| But they're the habit of this  | 
| wasted place. In them | 
|   | 
| the ground is wise. They are | 
| its remembrance of what is.  |