They tumble deceptively
onto the fissured asphalt,
plaster cracked years
flake away where no eye watches.
Hollow houses, their boards rotted
by the chew and gnaw of tireless winds,
old-time burgs, small, forgotten,
lost now within a retreating landscape.
We used to thrive in a hard-scabble way.
We used to be owners of faithful dogs,
the daughters of grit-hardened men,
sons of backwoods riflemen,
blood kin to the furnace and the fields.
Both factory and Mill printed a community
upon long dusty summers,
winter launched many a lunch-pail march,
and it was good in a nail-bitten way.
It all fell away so swiftly,
a bottom line in a thick read ledger
scratched through.
Thereafter great-grandparents
were buried in tall clocks,
all carted away upon jumbled flatbeds.
Piece by piece our town was sold
for pennies - our very own, well-worn,
spent out pennies.
Categories:
flatbeds, poetry,
Form: Free verse