Poems of eco-exile

By John, posted by Tracy

JTG Poems of eco-exile:
a response for those who grovel to the brutalists at TargaWest

1.

Properties of home, of sparse trees,
rare blooms, friable air –
evocation, vocation, scarred senses;
recall being there –

but not for pleasure,
not for dog days

or social
get-togethers
with loving neighbours.

Community: idée fixe
the way we all hope,

so set in our ways.


2.

Skin-sloughing heat
and racing heart; night-sweats;
roos on frost mornings
lifting eyes to examine
the house windows –

unlike any other –

repartee in co-existence.

From one extreme to another,
even in red fear, even in thirst,
it is the space occupied
as we walk anywhere, anytime.


3.

No point dredging
up detail, though detail
delineates: every strand
of wire in tension & lapse,
every dead tree of the great
drying, every dead tree
we hear revived.


4.

Wrote a book
every moment there –

here, every moment
not there is written.

Walden was always
assignation, a sign.

For demolition,
a clearance sale.

Profiteers are better
read than you think.

It’s all good advertising
for them. That’s Real Estate,

despite flora and fauna,
in spite of locals.

Some are more equal than others.
Almost read that at school.


5.

Indelible: school bus terror:
Boy experiencing parents speaking through children
snarling at him: ‘Your father must be a drunk
opposing the car rally! Is he mad?’
That and the gunfire, the noose of the loop
closing around us. Carrion. Rifles. Fireworks.


6.

Another on the loop
opposes the waste,
the sport of cars.

The Shire calls hills ‘Highlands’
and makes its own rules. The Sell.

The mining magnate ate asbestos on his cereal
to prove how efficacious it was.

Leaf out of the book. Time trial.


John Kinsella