Wonders of the Invisible World

The urban sublime:
Beneath the asphalt
Of the parking lot,
There lies a cradle,
A nest of rebar,
Meticulously
Put in position
By a small army
Of engineers, who—
For decades—slowly
Worked out the ideal
Arrangement to keep
Your car from crushing
The concrete, itself
Lodged invisibly
Under the blacktop.
The sidewalk’s every
Crack was planned by some
Beneficent mind
To keep some greater
Crack from threatening
The mathematically
Perfect plan that dreamed
The impossible
Dream to let you walk
Beside the hot black
River of the street.