We cherish these precious streets of ours

Where lessons learned

And heart-fires burned us

Into far away orbits

To test this central gravity

We call ‘The Neighborhood’

Some came back too soon

They said

To find that long lost super head

While others waited…

For their perfect time and space

To cue their due reentries

Unto the finish lines of their human race

Back to the neighborhood

The decompression widened eyes

Inspiring truth to grow the courage

To demolish lies once learned

As a consequential need to know

Why it was so long ago

We were led as best we could

To move out of the neighborhood

So back we came for reasons plain

And motives fed by sanity

To chew on what we’d learned of pain

Blessed by our Christianity

To be all that we possibly could

Back here in the neighborhood

John Christopher

1984