Local: A Quadrille

On returning to another home. Written in the one and only Philly, and inspired by a poetic challenge (read after the break for more!).

City Hall, Philadelphia (photo taken January 2024).

It’s not what it is now
but how you remember it

when you were a local,
the figment of the city

you stitched anew from 
a song of American names—

Arch, Walnut, Baltimore,
Spruce, Fairmount, Locust:

threads of the tapestry
wrapped around your heart.

——

This poem was inspired in part by the fine folks at the dVerse Poets Pub. Specifically, it’s a quadrille, or a poem of exactly forty-four words in length centered on a chosen word or topic. The challenge for this week was to write a quadrille using the word “figment,” which explains its presence at line four. Seeing as I managed to revisit Philadelphia—the city where I lived for two years en route to earning my Ph.D. in English (at Penn)—on Tuesday to catch up with some old friends and colleagues, I decided to write this quadrille as a tribute to the Philly I remember, and the one I kept in my heart during my time in Belgium.

Many thanks to Lillian at Dverse for setting this fun challenge, and I hope you enjoyed reading my contribution. Comments, as ever, are more than welcome!