We watched the four houses across the street destroyed for thirty-two new buildings,
the surrounding trees and plants and invisible creatures unearthed for new buildings.
In our old neighborhood, across that street, an outpatient hospital was demolished
to make way for an entire block of townhomes, bringing new people into new buildings.
This has been our experience, 26 years in two different homes, that some old thing
was ultimately torn asunder and replaced through the noise and dust by new buildings.
Lew’s Dari-Freeze is fenced off and ready for bulldozers. Our town’s oldest fast food
joint, terrible food I remember, but the place–old, classic, a marker, soon: new buildings.
On every block of our old stomping grounds, the old is going down and the new springs
up like weeds, only much nicer, but too expensive, too modern, these new buildings.
And in SE Portland many of the main thoroughfares are unrecognizable in their newness, all the old buildings and businesses replaced by giant sky-born new buildings.
It’s all for somebody’s good and benefit, maybe yours, maybe ours, and yet, something
goes missing, something disappears, and in time, the memories are erased,
replaced by new buildings.
michael jarmer 
I feel sad reading this. It’s the theme here in Baltimore too. Is this progress?
Your poem is well-written though! Didn’t want to forget to mention that; it was hiding a little behind the waves of nostalgia…