It wasn’t special, I knew even then
as a high school freshman: just a fountain
in the City of Fountains, in between
office buildings and manicured lawns. But
classical songs played from unseen speakers
all night long. We’d go there before curfew—
find someone who could drive to take us there—
to the fountain’s edge for the sound of it:
water and violins, the closest thing
to magic in the middle of the vast
suburbs of Kansas, land of man-made lakes.
Our only ocean was prehistoric.
We would sit there on its ancient floor and
just listen, trying to hear the future.