Detroit: The Reality of Death and the Reality of Life

Morgan Meis in Image:

On a moonless night you can drive around parts of the city, and it is dark. Just dark. No streetlights, no houselights. Nothing. Just the stars and the beams from your headlights illuminating the cracked roads in front of the car.

A few months back, on the east side, near some abandoned buildings and the husks of a few houses that had been burned down almost completely, I heard a rustle in the nearby bushes. A ring-necked pheasant emerged from the undergrowth. It strutted across the grass, clucking and preening. Cocky.

Suddenly, a hawk swooped down from a tree nearby. The hawk, talons extended, made a grab for the pheasant. The pheasant ducked and parried at just the right time and then scurried back into the thicket from which it had emerged.

This, in the middle of metropolitan Detroit.

More here.