JUST LIKE AMERICA

  

Smarting with five wasp stings,

I strolled about Westminster Hall

through the rambling cemetery,

comparing the two graves of Poe--

 

while towering behind the church,

like an upstart promoted to supervisor,

a newly constructed office building

sneered down upon the Conqueror Worm.

 

That day was the Fourth of July.

That evening, in the Inner Harbor,

families huddled under umbrellas,

craned at fireworks in a drizzle.

 

Rockets soared from a nearby barge,

exploding just like America;

while above and beyond Federal Hill

and the Museum of Visionary Art,

 

another barge blew its pyrotechnics,

as in some parallel universe.

Slowly the rain soaked into the earth,

the grass, and the two graves of Poe.