hiking trails galore
smoke shops, cool bookstore with cat
love the atmosphere
Historic buildings
railroad tracks run by feed mill
churches still ring bells
Pearl valley cheese
world's largest cuckoo clock
butchering by hand
gateway to Amish
unique shops and wineries
small hometown feeling
*Population 828
Some of the above mentioned places are within 20 miles of Baltic
withered cornstalks stand
clutching Indian corn cobs
faded by the sun
sun plummets behind
snow covered christmas trees
highlighting night sky
rolling country hills
crossroads of america
ohio's byways
They seep from
long fissured asphalt,
and plaster cracked years.
Hollow houses, boards rotted
by the chew and gnaw of prying winds,
old-time forgotten burgs
lost now within a retreating landscape.
They used to thrive in a hard-scabble way,
used to be owners of hunting hounds
the daughter’s offspring of grit-hardened men,
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 its bench-made 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,
then carted away upon jumbled flatbeds.
Piece by piece small towns were sold
for pennies - their very own, well-worn,
long spent pennies.
ohio's sixty
as white snow still lays on ground
i'm in my shorts
manure spreading
farmers fields become true green
tiny plants emerge
let’s go to the haunted cave
I can dress up and be a knave
we must take the underground wagon ride
just fifteen dollars gets me inside
I will stay here and fan myself said Grandma Wrench
She rushed over to plunk down on a tiny bench.
There are thirty-thousand bats in there she yelled to her man.
He rolled his eyes, and fished his money from the can.
The haunted cave is in Ohio, Lewisburg, and it is long.
You can walk or ride, it’s fun; you cannot go wrong.
But after seeing the bats, I decided to stay outside with Gram.
While you post Dracula kind of pix on InstaGram.
Where the groundhog has chewed the chain link
I slip through a brittle-boned hedge, and I am there
where geese sail a puddle-deep fog.
We taste the sea in its brine-washed ripples
splash through its salty clouds. Ohio rides on
oceanic currents, the Atlantic gets swept up
on gull wings, surf drifts West for miles,
then flops down and paddles deeper.
The sky has startled fisheyes in it; between the
soggy woods, aquatic scales slide and gleam.
Long-winded showers shatter where mermaids
chase, plunging on through dazed turnpikes,
or pausing to comb their wavy hair at windswept
rest-stops along Interstate I.75.
under the serpent mound prudent
demons (NOT monsters) preserve the
nuts and
endosperm meant for
later day
postmen to deliver
when the time is
all too convincingly ripe
May 4, 1970
shots rang out
tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming
four dead in Ohio
I used to stay inside.
Then I burned my finger on the stove.
No one lives there anymore.
Except me and I forgot the bandages.
So I went to the store and never went back home.
Anxiety-
Keeps me running, and hurting.
Traveling long distances.
Running, and never as fast as a car.
Although it is much more painful.
I could get hit by a car.
I try not to think about that.
I could run into a pothole and fly.
Everyone dreams of fly, fly, flying.
I still have 126 miles to the store.
I chose a store all the way in Ohio.
What do I know?
From blue collar workers
tool and dye filling the
slots more jobs more
job awesome tower
city the flats the docks
Cleveland rock and roll
hall of fame the Browns
the beaches no more
fake news finally on
board with the best
of the best Donald
Trump wins you know it
you’re hired best poet
They seep from
long fissured asphalt,
and plaster cracked years.
Hollow houses, boards rotted
by the chew and gnaw of prying winds,
old-time forgotten burgs
lost now within a retreating landscape.
They used to thrive in a hard-scabble way,
used to be owners of hunting hounds
the daughter’s offspring of grit-hardened men,
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 its bench-made 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,
then carted away upon jumbled flatbeds.
Piece by piece small towns were sold
for pennies - their very own, well-worn,
long spent pennies.
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