Infill

Frank Vincentz, "Raddet ir-Roti Cart Ruts, Xemxija
Heritage Trail in St. Paul's Bay, Malta," 2014

The grid of streets is something like a game board;
the houses, stones. Urban planners, eyes sore and
reddened by the absinthe green wash from those
fluorescent lights overhead, idealists all (who else
would attempt to harmonize overland wagon ruts,
cow paths, and the motion of a new raw century?)
sighing in isolated unison, fingernails tapping out a
neighborhood, its zoning changes—a click on their
keyboard, and a stone’s placed on the goban. O my
boundary setters, leave me a gap in the fence line,
a hollowed out space in your infill, so I can escape.