to impromptu rodeos prompted
By the kick whoop of a week
done well, but that was
Decades before, before
Main Street words like mercantile
and Winchester
dwindled with the wells
The dirt was still pioneer when Wilma Mason
wreaked havoc by whispering
Woolworths so often
That the womens’ dreams of tulip sundaes
felt like adultery and made church hurt
The dirt, though soft and polished,
Remains pioneer, though unseen,
and Winchester
dwindled with the wells
The dirt was still pioneer when Wilma Mason
wreaked havoc by whispering
Woolworths so often
That the womens’ dreams of tulip sundaes
felt like adultery and made church hurt
The dirt, though soft and polished,
Remains pioneer, though unseen,
Though under the asphalt and empty
store fronts’ lazy gaze
Over all that is entombed
Underneath: lost teeth, lost buckles
A Tibetan saddle blanket displaced,
Spoons and spurs pressed into the caliche
Like dinosaur femurs waiting for the
New wave of pioneers to pull up
The pavement and discover and gawk
Before rolling out the new hyperspeed
single bullet magnet track for yet
another future
To blow past town without a boot
Ever kicking the storied dirt
store fronts’ lazy gaze
Over all that is entombed
Underneath: lost teeth, lost buckles
A Tibetan saddle blanket displaced,
Spoons and spurs pressed into the caliche
Like dinosaur femurs waiting for the
New wave of pioneers to pull up
The pavement and discover and gawk
Before rolling out the new hyperspeed
single bullet magnet track for yet
another future
To blow past town without a boot
Ever kicking the storied dirt
This seems a ghost town idyl. Too many hyperspeed bullet tracks, I say!
ReplyDeleteA poem steeped in history .... I enjoyed this.
ReplyDeleteThis is so potent!
ReplyDeleteAnd what comes after the bullet train of the future, I wonder. There's room enough for my mind to project several shades between utopia and dystopia, but I'm not sure what the dirt will collect in its memory when that time rolls around.
ReplyDeleteI love this picture of the past, so alien to me, and yet so familiar from TV and film. I love the thought of all those ‘lost teeth, lost buckles … Spoons and spurs pressed into the caliche / Like dinosaur femurs’.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully inventive. I love all the detail.
ReplyDeleteLove the title...so much gets lost and swept aside in what is considered progress.
ReplyDeleteYes, in some of ours, mine, we have seen the paving come. My favorite line is "... so often That the women's’ dreams of tulip sundaes felt like adultery and made church hurt." I used to get those at a drug store fountain for a nickel. The maker liked our group of boys. Cover the dirt? It's hard to do, weeds still crop though the sides and cracks.
ReplyDelete..