Downtown

News crawls in its garish colors

A Times Square in miniature

But the phantoms of department stores and finishing schools

Still sit hollow, awaiting their waltz with the orange pylons and cranes that are perpetually somewhere

Cross streets sustain cobblestone progress, fish taco specialists

And havens for bicycle evangelists

The navel of the city is its Greek Revivalist cupola

A marble homage to ancient democracy

Now wrapped by a novel perimeter of upturned, wrought-iron arrows

The picnic blankets, picketers and panhandlers that once populated this lawn have gone missing

A public space forfeited in the name of security

<<<German Village/Merion Village • Convention Center/Short North>>>

Poem ©Tracy Zollinger Turner, 2014.
These pieces were originally used to narrate the photography
exhibit 25 on High in Columbus, Ohio’s Urban Art Space.