I drive into the downtown of a place as unlikely as Bartlesville OK. And there it is. I cannot take my eyes off it and curse myself for not bringing the Leica that would do it justice. I snap-shot it anyway. The architecture demands it. I can't say why. At the local history museum, I'm told it's a Frank Lloyd Wright building. I have a vision of the old man in the black cape haunting his creation. I stand in the street shouting at him. Old man, gifted beyond angels, the big projects eluded you. You were too damned yourself. You wouldn't play the game because for you it was not a game. So you drew houses for wealthy men in Los Angeles and Phoenix and Chicago. But here, near the Kansas border, men rich on oil, let you break out. Just once. You designed a work of art just to show what might have been if Atlas hadn't dropped the ball. Frank Lloyd Wright, you magnificent bastard, exiled to the prairie, you showed them what the landscape of the American Century might have been if the powers that be had forgiven your personality. [A version of this prose poem was original published on Facebook May 12, 2015]
