Vacant

There is a parking lot on the block where I grew up.
Before that it was a grassy vacant lot with a deep
ditch at one end between two white houses.
And farther back there was a burnt out shell
of a small house that was never boarded up
before they tore it down, and one day
we opened a window and went inside.
Before that there were no trees in the yard.
Once, there were no trees in town and once
there were no trains, and once there were no
roads and once there were no houses, once
there we no horses and once there were
no wheels, and once the state was a grassy
vacant lot, and you could see father than
your eyes knew how to guage and the grass
turned into a gold paved parking lot
just under the horizon, but your eyes
weren't there then and there was no
horizon to surround your body with its
closed windows from where you'd imagine
a circle and a center of that circle that moved
as you moved. You weren't there.
I wasn't there either. And we couldn't
have been because they haven't torn us
down. No one has even thought
of forcing open our painted-shut eyes
and crawling in to find out what happend.