This was the Day 5 prompt of the April Poem A Day Challenge from Poetic Asides : "For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem about a landmark. It can be a famous landmark (like Mount Rushmore or the Sphinx) or a little more subdued (like the town water tower or an interesting sign)." http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CommentView,guid,19d56087-4047-4589-b39b-995e90466679.aspx"Eyeless In A New Town"
This is not about the lost gray waterfalls, the
Green trails long and like teething cucumber slices
The deep sleepy gorges doused with pine incense
Twenty-four hours
It’s not about gurgling creeks, the bystander sky that
Helplessly melt into the sprawling lake, nor even
The Canada Geese flying in V-shaped flocks that get
Caught by surprise
At the freshness of the languid emerald-colored spot
Beneath their wings when they exclaim in goose tongue:
How come this story’s not mentioned in travel catalogues?
Stupefied, they fly off
Eyeing a distant plane buzzing like a lost lone tourist
Like the way I hover, feel in this place, seek and see what
Was whispered once: Lost stories. Paths that existed once
But were taken off
The city maps because quite a few had forgotten them
In their hurry to reach drive-ins and sloppy express lanes
No travel guide said this mound resembled a four-humped
Camel, green three to four months, then fading to become
Various shades of red orange purple dark brown to an eerie
White. Some flowers lie strewn in her memory, live there,
Where I swerve, the way she had, before I read the one-word
Sign in rust: Amen.
This is not about the lost gray waterfalls, the
Green trails long and like teething cucumber slices
The deep sleepy gorges doused with pine incense
Twenty-four hours
It’s not about gurgling creeks, the bystander sky that
Helplessly melt into the sprawling lake, nor even
The Canada Geese flying in V-shaped flocks that get
Caught by surprise
At the freshness of the languid emerald-colored spot
Beneath their wings when they exclaim in goose tongue:
How come this story’s not mentioned in travel catalogues?
Stupefied, they fly off
Eyeing a distant plane buzzing like a lost lone tourist
Like the way I hover, feel in this place, seek and see what
Was whispered once: Lost stories. Paths that existed once
But were taken off
The city maps because quite a few had forgotten them
In their hurry to reach drive-ins and sloppy express lanes
No travel guide said this mound resembled a four-humped
Camel, green three to four months, then fading to become
Various shades of red orange purple dark brown to an eerie
White. Some flowers lie strewn in her memory, live there,
Where I swerve, the way she had, before I read the one-word
Sign in rust: Amen.
2 comments:
Simply beautiful!
thanks Priti! a sign people saw but not celebrated as much becuase it was getting forgotten...
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