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.....
Copyright © Alex Roberson | Year Posted 2015
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