Three-One-Three
In a wet field a new farm is growing.
Nursed amongst split tires and sticky-sour Fago bottles,
fed with catalytic converters,
drinking its fill from a crumpled oil pan.
Buildings used to grow here
mighty, gruff and quick. Their
concrete edges skinning the sky as
they laughed at nature:
they laughed at time.
For it was all money in their pockets.
This farm had joy to sell -
stacking with a glinting smile,
like a toddler arranging Birthday presents, -
wind-whipped Joy,
rhythm and blues Joy,
pregnant-Christmas-tree Joy,
frozen-puck-missing-teeth Joy.
Now the snow falls muddied here
The empty factories churning - overtime -
filtering out the joy of January, and leaving
express ways that crack and moan under
the weight of their wallets, shrugging their shoulders
against a wash of winter air that cracks their heels
dries their lips and rosies their cheeks.
Here distance is measured not in minutes
but the droning slip of miles. As we were once champions
roaring our chariots, sparkling, towards
the fabled horizon - that never came.
Now, like the Puritans,
we leave our homeland and throw ourselves
to the World. Heavy only in, Faith
never wavering in the churches we built -
that we leave to rattle empty.