Phoenix Memories

She put an airplane in the sky

Of the Phoenix cityscape she made

And indeed my first memory of Phoenix

From 1958

Was of landing at Sky Harbor airport

After seeing moonlight on a blanket of fluff clouds

Below us.

..

She put a skyline in the middle of the cityscape

And it compelled the memory

Of the Bowers family driving down Central

When I was very young.

There was a big blue building

That headquartered Guaranty Bank

And one of the corners of the top two floors

Boasted the giant monogram GB

And someone, probably my mother, joked

That we were approaching the Gary Bowers Bank.

It was wonderful, that joke–made me feel

Like a Big Shot

At three feet something.

..

Below the skyline of her cityscape

Are gridded lines that evoke the Phoenix Street grid

With a thick through line that might be the 202

Or I-10.

When I was growing up

We just had the Black Canyon Highway, I-17,

And the Buckeye exit was what you used

To get to the airport.

The intersection of 59th Avenue and Camelback

Was stop-signed dirt when we moved

Into our nearby house on Pasadena Avenue,

Technically in Glendale

But really it was Greater Phoenix,

And across t9th

They later built Grandview, our shopping mall

With the Valley National bank

Where I got my first savings account

And the A J Bayless for groceries

And Cox’s Bakery with their deep discount

On day-old bread

And W T Grant that had a terrarium full

Of little bitty turtles.

..

The cityscape she made is awash with red and yellow

Colors of the Phoenix bird

Everlastingly burned to ash

And everlastingly rising from her ashes

And red and yellow also evoke

The relentless furnace heat

That yields a summer from April to October

And in my prime I came to love that heat

Loved walking in it till I was sweat-lodge soaked

Ran 5 miles in a July midday in 1992

And felt as if a blacksmith had forged me

Into a broadsword, sturdy and sharp.

The maker of the cityscape has seen to it

That Phoenix will always be with me.

..