 |
| Urban Abadonment - Detroit |
The house situation
referred to in the poem
is actually in far worse
condition than this house
from Detroit's urban blight.
Premonitions of
Sunlight and Sorrow
James Hart
A
brooding mood, I stop for a moment to stare
at
my ancient neighbor’s abandoned house,
the
one beyond it vacant as well but less neglected.
For
a moment I’m struck by premonitions of emptiness,
shiver
and shadow palpable in the autumn shade.
To
awaken some year far away from now
and
know I’m the final resident in my block,
the
whole town vacated by an overnight mystery,
I’d
ask myself how such dread losses occurred:
Alien
encounters? Angels of doom? Elder gods
personified,
threading vanishing skeins of fate?
Like
children of time playing aimless games of tag,
clouds
skip fragmented shadows over dimming sky,
sunlight
and sorrow paint transparent weathers
across
clapboard walls. In the cool evening air
smells
of damp and decay pervade the breeze.
Another
statistic for Alzheimer’s malign triumph
over
memory, laughter, the old man left this house,
powerless:
first to go to his daughter, then into fog
where
such men pass their days in deathless paradox.
Not
even raccoons in the attic made him hire repairs;
he
shared his last days here with rain, rot, ruin,
oblivious
to his daughter’s or neighbors’ concerns.
I
can tell you how I abhor this residential mess, fears
of
fire and thieves increasing with the scattered leaves
across
the lawn. And yet I wonder who would care
if
we all were raptured into empty air, leaving behind
houses
occupied by rank abandonment, vacant memory
shackled
to his ghostly brothers, sleep and death,
fallen
timbers exposed to glaring eye of sun and sky.
September
23, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment