New Growth

Sometimes it's a meandering path which takes me to the poem for the day.

It was something like that last night at the Dayton Art Institute, where I joined David Lee Garrison, of Wright State University, in sharing some art-related poems.

On the way to the principal pieces of art I had written about, I shared, among others, the piece I posted here yesterday, "Morning Mist" ... a piece about a finger painting that I treasure beyond words (it was done by my grandson) ... a piece about one of my own paintings, now residing in a good home in Illinois ... one about Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" ... one about a scene I observed while looking OUT of a window at the DAI.

Then I shared a piece about Charles Sheeler's "Stacks in Celebration" and one with a reference to Georgia O'Keefe's "Purple Leaves" ... both a part of the DAI collection.

I also shared one titled "After the Muffin" ... one of my favorite art forms ... ranking right up there with cake of any kind.

Sorry you missed it. I'll try to make that up to you in coming days.

Meanwhile ...

Today's poem contains some thoughts about what has happened to so much of our land ... thoughts driven largely, I suppose, by my having grown up in a rural area, where the poor, worn-out soil was gentled into producing food and flowers.

I have no special agenda, no axe to grind ... just some observations that simply came to me on a rainy day in a shopping center parking lot.

I may be wrong about grasses someday retaking"these smothered acres."

I take no comfort in the possibility that I might be right. Right or wrong, I shall never know, but it seems logical, reasonable to expect that the sprawl of what we've come to treasure as our way of life cannot be sustained forever.

Something to think about, perhaps.

The poem:

NEW GROWTH

Where crops once grew,

the skin of commerce

stretches into the distance,

acres in all directions.

On verdant prairie land

now grow waving fields

of carts, cars and customers.

They bring the green

to a soil long bereft

of plants, except token trees

planted as memorials

to what once was.

And when it rains, the rain

finds no welcoming soil.

It piles up at the drains

as it flees this alien surface.

What strange things

we now grow, and

how great the cost.

Someday the grasses

will retake

these smothered acres,

rightfully theirs

by prior claim.

The rain will come

in its gentle way

to bless this soil,

and it will prosper

as it did before.

© 1996

(originally published in Poetic Eloquence)

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Today's word: smothered