Memory of a Tree

~ after Mercedes López

I've come to love the milky taste 
of tea with no actual milk in it, 

and the tang of salt in the air on dry days
in the mountains. What are the scaffolds 

on which we build if not the ghosts 
of magnificent cities, whose blueprints

sycophants and tyrants tried but failed
to obliterate? Here is a lattice studded

with diamond points of light, an oceanic 
generation of forests. I want to see 

not monuments but grids conducting  
the hum of a different electricity, lanes

and highways overlaid with cool moisture;
every pewter cell of night cast open.