Tulips

In the mountain of dirt the truck brought,
Right on top,
A tulip bloomed.
Red, bright in the March sun
That was glaring from a cloudless sky,
Seemingly forcing the resurrection of the bulb.
More appeared later in the week,
Following their brave friend
Creating a pyramid of color, sparse though it was.

They would have come up in the front yard
Of an old woman’s cottage somewhere in Alexandria.
But she moved to a nursing home
And her son sold the house to a developer.
She never got to see what I see now,
This rainbow that was sown by aged hands
And rent from its place by the cold steel of progress.

She sits and stares out the window of the Baptist Village,
A view of I-275 is what she sees now,
With a few trees in the way.
Her tulips are mine
And I’m filled with shame over my enjoyment of them,
Of her work,
Of her loss.
She’ll die alone, sometime soon,
With only the flowers standing in place for her life.

(c) 2000 Scot N. Kaeff
 
 
 

The Stench Of The Day

Styrene fills the air,
The smell of progress, of torn roads
And ravaged plains;
The smell of bridges and fiberglass,
Along with the occasional suffocating wave
Of boiling fresh asphalt rolling over you
On a summer day.

Sometimes the blue sky seems to mock the truth.

The skies were quiet a hundred years ago.
Now we irradiate lives in a quest for newer,
Quicker,
More efficient,
More economical
Ways to die.

Television, radio, computer noise.

Breezes over grass,
Wind through the trees,
Rain on the dirt in my backyard.

What a choice…
Cradle to the grave,
Axes to grind in the ongoing struggle
Between angels’ voices
And the devil’s grin.

(c) 2000 Scot N. Kaeff