We flew to Detroit for a tricky operation on my husband’s heart

Hadn’t been back since 1965

When the city roiled with prosperity

Skies smoked dollar bills and

Roving enterprise men drove Cadillacs down wide esplanades

Hived out in skyscrapers

Papered the land with factories and mills

The size of football fields.

But when we arrived all that was left was

Lots of nothing

Cadaverous warehouses and empty storefronts

Looming schools abandoned and boarded up

Tall office buildings, hundreds of them, all

Hollowed out window shells

Every neighborhood blank with weeds and broken concrete

The city might as well be dead my husband said.

Then we went to the hospital and afterwards home.

Surgery was a success.