There are sections of the large cities where gentle breezes fear to travel. Neighborhoods are close but neighbors are not. Air conditioning is putting a small mattress on the fire escape and hoping the star's cold light will find a way through the haze and break the heat.

This is the part of the city that most of us pretend isn't there. It is the place where residents sleep to avoid being awake and where dreams are cut short by sirens wails, or the frustrated screams of couples trapped together by the bars they put on their windows.

Cities are fascinating because they are like intricate machines filled with  millions of moving parts that all must function to make it work.

Wealth and poverty coexist short distances from each other, but the canyons are deep and the bridges few.

Canyons (In the Cat's Eye, 2009) is about life for those living in the those narrow spaces where the light seldom shines.

Glenn K. Currie

Canyons

 

The sun never visits

In these canyons.

It avoids

The shadowy places

Where buildings die.

 

The heat will come

Late in the afternoon,

Soaking the evening

With the sweat

Of the day.

 

An old white bra,

Built by a construction crew,

Hangs resignedly

Beside an out-of-shape

Muscle shirt.

 

The breeze they seek,

Lost its way

Two blocks from the river.

Mugged

By skyscrapers.

 

Soon the owners will gather

On iron grilles,

Above the dumpsters.

Hoping the darkness

Will shorten the night.