This Glass and Aluminum Structure

There’s a novel, and it’s written in the present
tense so as to propel the action forward

Put the reader into the scene – but it’s a
memoir, meaning the events have already happened

The people have already changed, that moment

of epiphany has already occurred

And so those characters aren’t even the same

people anymore, they’re more like

Shadows of the characters in this novel –

and those places aren’t the same

As they were back then either – new

roads have been built, some have been improved

And widened, sidewalks have been added

freeway onramps have been built

The population has changed demographically –
the airport has been improved

New industries now thrive where

before they were not even imagined

Except maybe in sci-fi magazines
from the 1950’s, and in dreams …

And people fly to locations and to different
cities from this glass and aluminum

Structure as they go way up high
in the clouds, travelling at great velocity

So that in relation to people still

on the ground they are not the same

People anymore, they’ve changed –

that moment of discovery