While walking one evening I crested a hill and saw the lights of a city ~
A city with no hate or contradiction,
A city with no sort of dereliction.
What kind of place was this that I had found?
A place where litter dared not touch the ground,
A place where peaceful sounds were never drowned
By the cries of people living in the streets
Or children who can't get enough to eat?

While walking did I tire and fall asleep?
Was it the beauty that I'd seen that made me weep
When I awoke to find it was a dream
While the world I have returned to makes me scream?

Or while walking did I slip and hit my head?
Could I, for just one moment have been dead?
Was what I'd seen before me just a glimpse
of Heaven, which God uses as he tempts
Poor sinners such as I who wake to dwell
In these dirty, noisy cities here in Hell?

If so, then as I've heard some say
God's good and just in his own way . . .
For in this world of madness  I now find
So many gracious people who are kind.

And in the middle of this soiled city
l search until I find a place that's pretty ~
It's just a park near where I live
But the peacefulness here seems to give
my soul a place where it can rest
from all the questions of this test
that we call life

The beuaty here has calmed my disillusion
And seems to have brought to me this kind conclusion:
The place I'd seen, be it dream or vision
Is not so differfent from this world we live in.

        & nbsp;       &n bsp;       &nb sp;       &nbs p;         ;        Debbie Blanco ~ 1991