Progress and Preservation

Exhaust fumes and flower blooms Acrid smells, gentler scents & pungent decay Hot molten gold flows out of a clear blue sky Cars rumble down streets made into alleys through the trees that tower over them like Eiffel Or Freedom With the rain age old mud mixes into the seams of recently laid concrete My city is a cyborg With kudzu wrapped telephone wires weaving away from its heart like veins through body Carrying life-lines to its extremities Steel office buildings rise from the ground alongside the trees that we plant on the sides of downtown streets Because we don't want to forget what the land was like before we came And our quarries carved down mountains and our progress intruded on mother nature We don't want to forget what things were like Before the South started to become "new" and king Cotton lost his right to rule to the steel mills, quarries and commercialization and became a peasant Before industrialization changed the landscape And Birmingham earned the nickname "The Magic City" Civil Rights demonstrators marched some of the same streets we walk And the 16th Street Baptist Church has an exhibit that reminds us that sometimes progress comes with a high price right across from the Civil Rights Institute Part of Martin's dream came true in some places Black and white children play together now But you can still see the Confederate Flag hanging from a pole at the side of the interstate as you go down towards Florida The Klan still holds rallies and buzzards can still be seen eating road kill in the middle of the suburbs This is still the south What some call the country ....and minders of the past are never that far away.....