The North West Territories
These are the places where my memory begins. Every hill was high and steep, wound around with narrow streets. Old Victorian houses examining the valleys below, bungalows and flats the color of terra cota shoulder to shoulder with an Art Deco bridge looking like it should be by the Emerald City. Stairways climbing past the palms and oaks and bougainvillea made of wood, concrete, or river stones, racing for the top of those hills. Everywhere there were people, friends, strangers, family, classmates, musicians, welders, poets, bus drivers, painters, and gangsters found by trouble whether they looked for it or not. It was where it was alright for all of them to be and no one thought about it once or twice. Squeezed between rivers and lakes and freeways and hidden it was unknown to everyone who was not there.
This is not how it was and certainly not is but how it seems to be when I dream.