Downtown

As a child, heading into The City meant shiny shoes and dress clothes

  Gazing at buildings from car windows as we drove down traffic laden streets, 

the excitement was tangible, Country mouse safe in her fishbowled car

 looking up at the city, gawking at towering windows 

that reach up into the sky.   

There is elation still as I walk the streets downtown 

staring up at buildings that angle up into the skies, 

quadrangles and triangles of brilliant blue  

  the morning is brisk and the crowds have disappeared through glass doors,
up elevators where,
in the bustle of the day's busyness, 

They Forget     

 Cerulean skies that seem to be just within reach 

  The streets, teeming with life, 

with those who are not so fortunate

who carry their life in a bag that rolls along the street for humanity to gawk at

 Who wear misfortune with the same casualness that some don their day's wardrobe

 the spectrum of the rainbow that splatters the walkways 

  "art" that amuses amidst the stone cold hardness of the streets

 peddlers who make their daily bread one sausage at a time     

and the bus/train drivers who keep the urbanites connected with home
It's all here in Downtown...

In the immortal words... (umm, okay maybe not so immortal) of Petula Clark 

When you're alone
And life is making you lonely,
You can always go downtown
When you've got worries,
All the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown