Black Box
Four poems
Lincoln County Driving through familiar farmland with my wife, I name the former high school classmates who once tilled those fields. But almost all of those kids left the family farms and moved to various cities. Their parents are now far too old to still be working the harvest so I guess they probably sold all their acres and retired. O, we humans love to think that the sacred is stable but time constantly rearranges the world and replaces our childhood fables with hard-working strangers.
Cobbler
At Easter Mass, I notice
that the sole is coming loose
from my shoe. These are not
the kind of shoes that can be
re-resoled but they're still
good shoes. I've owned them
for a decade. I've worn these
at weddings, funerals, poetry
readings, formal dinners
and fundraisers. And, most
important, on date nights
with Diane. These shoes—
these carriages—have carried
me through magic and loss.
And I'll mourn later at home
when I untie their last knots.
3:15 a.m. Yes, Insomnia, my fraternal twin, let's kick and kick because there's not enough room in this womb for either of us to keep any sleep.
Black Box Eventually, you begin to understand that some of the people you loved didn't love you back so you walk around the urban lake where dozens of wrecked planes sit on the water's floor. Some of those wrecks are ghosts. But some aren't because ghosts are only ghosts when they're still remembered by the living. Someday, you'll forget those who've forgotten you. Or maybe you won't.
Every one of them, great stuff.
"Cobbler" got me thinking, how people used to bronze baby shoes, put their beloved old horses out to pasture. We don't do things like that anymore, now we throw things away. The things that enabled us. The people who enabled us.
"What have you done for me lately?"
This is a profound shift in the culture, and I think it started in the '70s when we lost our manufacturing infrastructure. High quality domestic goods could not compete with inexpensive but poorly-made imports, so we lost our industries, one by one, I was young but still old enough to watch it happen and be aware it was happening. We lost our pride in labor well-performed. We lost our sense of honor. So shoes that cannot be resoled? Part of that thinking, planned obsolescence, no respect for the consumer, no respect for the worker.
First the jobs were shipped away, then they were automated away. The MBAs never thought of long-term consequences. The MBAs never thought of their responsibility to society.
And here we are, most of the populace too young to have ever known respect or to have ever been valued by the workplace or by each other. All they know is rage.
And our old people, we warehouse them, and now many of us think it's perfectly politic to steal the Social Security they paid into all their lives, so they wouldn't starve in their age. We throw away old things. That's our culture.
Your well-worn shoes that saw you through so many important things in your life, if only they had been made by a society that saw the value in creating shoes that can be resoled.
"ghosts are only
ghosts when they're still
remembered by the living" - Yes, so much yes. Lovely set of poems - thank you.