Today I share part, as in an excerpt, from a poem called The Girl from the Church on Arc Fall Road. I share it because I’m saddened by the results of a state superintendent of education election in my home state, fear for my nation, education and the right to choose the book you want to read.
I hate politics and what it turns us into, and how it turns people against each other, so I write.
excerpt from the girl on arc fall road
Some towns and cities turn to myths as the people of a metropolis drive to the outskirts. Employees leave cities where dust rises from the drills, and one construction worker directs traffic around the creation of a new lane. You remember what your hometown looks like from back then because you see no sign of it or the people born there now.
Close your eyes to early May, and couples dance the shag as a live band plays. Friday Night, walk downtown, and go around the pizza place. It opens for six months. Sometimes it shuts down for three, and people say it won’t open again. You smell the trailers of food, like at a county fair, with gyros and onions and peppers on sausage. People eat under one large tent. As the years go by, employees leave the cities, they live in renovated mill houses with an in-ground pool in the backyard, and a BMW in a new garage. They come to the city council, and say, “I think the Fest-i-fun attracts the wrong kind of crowd.” They shut it down, and no one dances on Main Street.
Close your eyes to early June, and picture the peach trees. They cover fields on the back roads all the way to the two-story, white house with a touch of colonial, chickens wandering, and gardens spreading. Get lost on the trails to the bridge, where if you jump enough, it swings. Observe riders on their horses crossing the stream.
….
But, that happened years ago before vendors took down the tables outside stores on Main like Dave’s Comics at the end of Fest-i-fun. They closed the tents. Now all you see are stores–some open, some closed, and some renovating, some gathering dust and floors that dip–on a hill on Main where people no longer dance the shag on a Friday night in May. Few know the festival now, and even fewer know people from this town. You leave town quicker than employees leaving cities, who press the pedal the moment they arrive on the outskirts of their neighborhood where peach trees used to grow.
Dedicated to my hometown …
Corrie's Season 