Suburban Poem by Ernest Hilbert

The insatiable sprawl thieves as it gives.
Recent ruins, their windows and walls skewed,
Lean in rain, emptied of an old promise.
We imagined ourselves warlords and fugitives
Where condos, no longer new, now brood
In barbaric tufts of untended grass.
Is endless growth the insensible seep of mold,
Fructifying growth of a rain forest,
Or simple industriousness of ants,
Set to their duties by instincts gone cold?
Or something else, unspent hope, or unrest
At the wonder and waste of human wants,
Opened engine's pooling oil, leaking vat,
Sap from a hacked tree, false gold of dripped fat?