WANT MY NEIGHBORHOOD BACK

My neighborhood is not a day, a week
or even a year, wherein I may seek.
It is life, the turns my world has taken,
pain in all the things we have forsaken.

I remember those times, keys left inside,
the car running while you go for a small buy;
or how my mother did not lock the door
when she went quickly for bread at the store.

Or how I could walk in the still of night
My heart being restful, not knowing of fright.
And old men would say, “ My word is my bond”
thought not all true, the idea was around.

I remember adults correct my slide
and my mother being fully on their side.
I knew the names, the lives, of people around.
Not like now where it seems strangers abound

We try to speak of beauty, speak of love,
but love is injured, her light not above.
Her heart, and her passions, her pains and cries;
joys too, are held down under mortal skies.

And she cannot escape to higher blue,
when truth seems now the individual you.
No light into light, too bright for eyes to see,
no beauty and truth above the troubled sea.

Moving backwards, believing in no thing
that lays further out than our sight can string;
ours more a love of mechanical plight
Man accepting no truths beyond his sight.

I would like my childhood neighborhood back,
But there seems something in man we now lack.