Imagining a New Path

© Matthew Word Bain

now, then, from across the street
what a different way of seeing
this same stretch of wall
with the protruding painted bricks
and the ambiguous commercial status
framed by one well lit municipal planting
and the cheerful precautionary cylinders
decorating the cables which stabilize
the telephone pole at center stage

an awkward view at best
one in which the intentions
of too many disparate parties
commingle uncomfortably
unable to present any
sort of coherent aesthetic

Christopher Alexander, et al
in their A Pattern Language
were proponents of
spending time
in a place
getting to know
the way the elements
moved through a location
before beginning to consider
what should be built there
let alone how it should
look or function