The weathered barn sags inward.
The farmhouse windows are broken and the door ajar.
Scattered among the untended fruit trees dying from blight
The emptied boxes of grayed and fallen beehives with no trace
Of the busy bees that once fanned the air around them.

Grayish winter clouds move in a silent train above
the apartments, homes, businesses, streets and lanes
of this self-anointed "America's City." Keeping count,
a large hard-to-miss sign opposite the library entrance
displays the YTD numbers of drug overdoses and deaths.

On a rooftop terrace in the predawn dark,
after collecting together some things to eat,
I sit facing a rocky outcrop across some rooftops
its top bathed in spotlights that warm an iconic ancient
weathered building aglow above the waking city.