Saturday Night
It's another Saturday night
ending this week
as started
alone again.
I came here
almost two years ago
to my retirement hermitage
but oddly,
and often uncomfortably,
shared with my hurt kids,
mental and physical illness
adopted and then adapted;
an asylum for the perpetually incontinent.
Cars pass by.
Sometimes a loud motorcycle
or two or three or four
or even more
here on the southern boundary
of a county seat
in a State
where rural counties
have been disenfranchised
of political purpose.
Our largest employers
are two tribally owned casinos.
One across the Thames River
flowing past our backyard retreat.
Our second largest income producer
may be the County Courthouse
where attorneys and police
collude to extort voluntary donations
from poor young adults
red and yellow,
black and white,
guilty of speeding
and texting
and smoking medicine
without a license
in Great White Father's sight.
I have been listening and watching
for what this half acre is.
We are not as rural as I had hoped,
with State highway 12 too near my front yard,
but this place is also not urban
or suburban.
What it is not,
whom we are not,
seems more clearly articulated
than any positive definition,
refining our becoming quiet place,
alone together,
shunned by healthier neighbors.
It's another lonely ending
anticipating yet another not new beginning
tomorrows stretching out alone
long retiring shadows
on this southern edge
of a Connecticut County Seat
without apparent purpose
or co-defining meaning.
Copyright © Gerald Dillenbeck | Year Posted 2017
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