Sinkhole Sally liked to swallow cars
Slurp them down in front of bars
People would wander out on a Saturday night
Watching their cars disappear; what a sight!
She did not receive many hardy har hars
People get extremely angry about their cars
Except the ones who spend lots of times in bars
They sometimes jump in Sally behind their cars
A sinkhole, deep as 20 feet,
Collapsed without a warning,
Around the corner from my street
Quite early in the morning.
Repair crews came but no one knows
What caused the sudden sinking.
Decrepitude, some folks suppose,
But not what we were thinking.
Ineptitude’s what we would blame,
For workers have been toiling
On that same block where they became
The source of tempers roiling.
They somehow cannot seem to fix
What underground befuddles,
So residents have had a mix
Of flames, closed streets and puddles.
Our car was parked right down the block
Where that huge hole descended.
It would have come as quite a shock
If that’s how my life ended.
November water somber black
Runs under haunted houses down the block
Moving through the shallow aqueducts
Poisoning shadows, contaminated, liquefied
Red bricks cling to deposits rank decay
Waters feed on foundations on limestone rocks
Down there to etch the center of the soul
Sinkholes gobble up the ground
Houses draw their own conclusions, shatter
Take men down as well in fear, in sin with malice
Expire as the lungs fill up with sediment
Only silent water knows the hour
There are no tombstones by the sinkhole graves
Silent meanderings, black water, somber wet
Continue down beneath the street
Gravity of the matter takes on meaning; holds
Sidewalks are known to walk alone
When sink holes take your home
wildflower filled sinkhole-
honey bees buzzing.
November 28, 2014
Written for Poetry Soup Member Contest: ONE Broken Monoku - Poetry Contest
Sponsor Rick Parise
Escape From a Sinkhole
There is a friend of mine
He is so very dear to me
His smile is like sunshine
Friends we will always be
He has a heart that is very kind
Where others take advantage of
Since love tends to really be blind
Usually the use is mistaken for love
One day when he was helping someone
By pulling that person out of a sinkhole
He didn’t see his ground caving in some
As he pulled, his strength was taking its toll
The one who he was helping, didn’t even see
That the ground around him was caving in
Well I was there, it just so happened to be
So I began to pull him from that situation
He is just about out of that hole right now
As we keep working on setting him free
We will figure it out someway somehow
For him to get above ground eventually
The escape from a sinkhole is hard to do
Unless you have a special hand to lend
Coming from one, you can hold on to
That is only found within a true friend
Florence McMillian (Flo)
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