The detour signs led us
off the road we knew
and pot holes opened up like sink holes.
Shacks and crooked
trailers dotted the road
and the car quieted-
our children in the
back suddenly paying attention.
We’d crossed a border without
guards
and entered a country where
people sit on porches
and don’t wave.
The road took us deeper
into the dappled woods
and curved through hills
fit for a travel brochure
but outside the window
garbage overflowed the ditch—
discarded tires and tin
cans, shiny pieces
of broken
glass signaling for help.
Dust hung in the air
and breached the rolled windows.
Our detour through this
country inside a country
made our children put
down their games
and ask questions we
couldn’t answer.
This poem is my attempt to play "Play It Again" one last time with the prompt from The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. I selected the challenge issued by Sherry Blue Sky to pen a poem of social commentary.
Also linked to Earthweal a new site dedicated to poetry of a changing earth.
19 comments:
I have traveled in the places you describe so well .... Happy New Year!
This is a fabulous poem ,Yvonne. I admire your spacing and phrasing as you set the scene. I do hope your poem reaches a wider audience though.
Brendan is hosting an Open Link at earthweal.com and I would recommend you link up there too.
Thank you for participating in the final Real Toads prompt of the decade.
Helen,
Thank you so much Happy 2020 to you as well.
Kerry,
Tank you for all of your encouragement over these past many months. I loved meeting you and all the other poets at "The Pond". I will check out Brendan's Open Link. Thanks!
The words "country within a country"gave me chills. Well done.
Sometimes it takes a detour to see what's there, off the official tour guide ... Interesting here that the landscape was more appealing though the truth of human habitation was not. What changed? Was the border real or symbolic or both? We wait for more news ...
Liza,
Thank you very much. I'm glad you liked it.
Brendan,
It definitely took a detour to open our eyes. My border, while symbolic, seemed very real. Having been to 3rd world countries, I never before realized that we have them right here. Off the beaten path. Thanks!
Wow, so well done. This poem is perfect and dark and loving and I feel like I've experienced this too. Thanks for this.
It's hard to look at all the worlds within worlds that surround us, and harder still to explain them--to ourselves or to our children. This is as vivid as a Depression-era photo, and its reality as stark.
So much more expressive than can be achieved by sketches or paintings. Visually so much more insightful. The truth of this also sad.
Yvonne, I'm so happy you linked at Earthweal. I remember the first time I drove through a First Nations reserve and couldnt believe the Third World conditions in a country as wealthy as Canada. It shocked me. I am decades older now and not much has changed - many northern reserves do not even have water safe enough for drinking or bathing. I could see the scene you painted and was curious as to where it might be....then I remembered the one I drove through which was only a few miles from my own comfortable home. No glass in the windows, small wooden shacks, they didnt even have running water in those years. Terrible poverty. Government created.
As I was reading this an image came to mind. I was walking in the woods and I came to a spot where debris was left. I wondered who left this stuff here and who did they think would clean up the mess? I picked up what I could.
The poem offers a picture of a world within a world within a world. And it continues. So sad to think that all this is human making. To capture the dilemma within the span of a little poem is brilliant.
Interesting read - makes me think of the reasons for those conditions, as they exist, in the third world and in ..the global north. Detours always lead to the unexpected!
I’m glad you linked at earthweal too. You paint a vivid, haunting picture.
Marian,
Thank you. I can still see it, have never forgotten it.
Hedgewitch,
Thank you so much. I don't think we ever explained it at the time. Now, with the benefit of years, I could attempt it. I guess me writing this poem was that.
Tony,
Yet they say a picture paints a thousand words. I guess that goes both ways. Thank you!
Sherry,
I'm so glad you prodded me in this direction. Sometimes I get lost in my own little measly world and forget to reach out. The poverty on reserves is shocking, still. And absolutely government created, both here and in Canada. The tragedy of church schools where First Nation youngsters were wrestled from their parents and their culture and punished for speaking their native language. It chills me still when I think of it. Ironically,I'm currently writing a novel encompassing the same. This is a subject dear to my heart. Thanks again for your ideas, your words, and your encouragement.
Trudessa,
It leaves an emptiness in the stomach, no? I guess that's all we can do, pick up what we can and if enough do that it might be enough. Thank you so much for commenting.
Sumana,
Thank you so much for reading my little poem! I'm humbled and honored by all this response.
Thutpurge,
Thanks! I believe, as Sherry said, the reasons are often, sadly, government created.
Rosemary,
Thanks. It's so nice to have joined another community of poets and writers. I think we all need each other more than we realize
This is such a poignant description of how it can be, and the distance a detour can show... hard to answer any questions...
Brudberg,
Right, the distance in miles was nothing compared to the cultural and societal distance. Thanks!
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