You grew into your destiny

in the city’s northwest, overlooking

a gas station, the KOA, a few acreages maybe

on the earliest suggestions of foothills,

we hardly remember what that was like.

It was before I was born into

what I think of as my life. 
Development has flooded the scene,

Victory Christian Church Complex venting

emissions, a warehouse vaguely Bauhaus,

reservoir of modern open homeplans

risen nearly to your base.

Each time I return to the same place 
it’s different. The adjacent new

community of Crestmont tries to act natural

leaning on the hill, rife with claims, wearing

last year’s colours in its awkward

final construction phase. In 1988

some people who’ve bought its houses

weren’t yet alive. For them 
you might as well be a product

of erosion. A natural event, without promise,

defined according to what is most durable

about you. Does it matter to us

if we’re outlived by a minute

or a thousand years? I’m not saying it should. 
You wandered away from insignia,

from the party of the symbolic imagination

and no one noticed. Hung with ads now,

the odd corporate zipline. Tourists

on the observation platform observe

the accelerating ritual of supply

and demand. A view makes us feel young. 
Ideal conditions are a memory that pains

even a Finn. Competitors and their equipment

have evolved, the old ratios are untenable.

You’ve outlived your design.

Would need to be retrofitted for safety

and who has that kind of time.