If a City
By Lisa Vihos – Sheboygan Poet Laureate
If a city was a story,
it would begin long before
streets and structures.
It would begin with land
and proximity to water,
and people who lived there
before it was a city
If a city was a poem,
it would be spoken in slow,
meandering lines with a litany
of occurrences, triumphs,
missteps, and resolutions.
There would be growth,
and it would not always rhyme
If a city was a sentence,
it would be declarative.
It would have a noun, like neighbor
or friend and many verbs
igniting action: create,
discover, help, flourish,
dream, propose, remember
The adjectives in the city
would write themselves
and would be testimony
to all the good works
of the people who live there:
thriving, generous, just,
compassionate, and welcoming
There would be no period
at the end of the sentence, because
like a poem, the city is always
unfolding toward something better
and everyone who lives in that city
adds their voice to the story,
has a hand in its making