Lost City
Mary Winters
How to lose track of an entire
city, not just a tiny diamond
earring skittering down the
drain, you with wet hands in a
hurry. Would it be sudden or slow,
a deliberate abandonment or just
a “happen”: how Emily Dickinson’s
sister described Emily never
leaving her father’s home after
a certain age -- no one really
noticing at all until one day...
Would vegetation rebel? Plants
decide you’d had your day. So
one morning with that second
cup of coffee you’d feel a
tickling at your feet; look down
and see grass coming up through
the floorboards, fourth floor
city apartment. Would Nature
pack up and go home: electricity
draw back from every lamp and oven,
streetlight, computer, television.
So in not too many years explorers
need a spaceborne radar system
to find your buried settlement.
Your once so well-known home.
