Tuesday, June 08, 2010

tough time

tooling down the road
a wild turkey on the right,
standing where you’d be
if you were thumbing a lift.

i blew past him doing fifty plus.
geeze, he was big. big as a dog.
had he heard of the oil spill, do any of them know?
is that why he was out walking? was he stunned?

this is a tough time
appalling, unequaled.
great damage has been done
to the waters, to the life, to the earth.

and we are the caretakers.
oh, what we have we have left for our children,
this legacy we’ve created,
all for pieces of silver.

i thought to continue to write here, to divert attention
away from thoughts of great sadness - disaster.
let me tell you - it isn’t easy, it is sad.
nothing is easy now. so sad.

7 comments:

TomC said...

Absolutely. On a project in Baton Rouge at the moment. This is where good people tuck their tails and try to press on with day to day responsibilities... while the walls around them crumble. Bad day in Blackrock.

Annie said...

To me, the image of the turkey, stunned, by the side of the road, is powerful. It reminds me of many of us, stunned, affected, and not knowing quite what to do. We can give money, but we can't change what has already happened, and will only get worse, before a kind of balance is restored. I fear hurricanes, and wind driven waves coating the shorelines, and further inland. "Do any of them know?" That makes me sad, thinking of the creatures who will die, and the habitats that are lost; for animals, birds, and ocean life, and for our children.

jack sender said...

I used the frivolous image of the turkey
the lure the reader in.

personally, I loved the lines “standing where you’d be if you were thumbing a lift.”
to me, reminiscent of Corso and the beat poets,
as if it was going to continue to be humorous.

I felt it was a worthy cause to use the lines in this poem.
we are all stunned.

Karen said...

I agree with you, Jack, about the thumbing line. It is beat-like. You should send this to Poets for Living Waters http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/

I have one in the open mic section (under N).

jack sender said...

Thanks, Tom, Annie, and Karen, especially for the link, although no one needs to profit from this, but to learn.

Ruahines said...

Kia ora Jack,
Bravo! This is powerful and has just left me staring and pondering. In the end the Earth will win, even as we attempt to eviscerate her.
Kia kaha,
Robb

Julie said...

I love this poem, Jack. I love "standing where you'd be/if you were thumbing a lift." It leaves almost a ghost or disappearing image of a person that goes so well with the horrors of the Gulf.

I'm with you on the sadness. You show that so well with the voice at the end. It's almost overwhelming, isn't it? I tend to think the animals will recover before the people will. But I don't know. I hope they all recover. Right now, I'm not too upbeat about it.

I'm probably too emotional about the subject to speak sanely about it. I'm still in the fist shaking stages. I'm also sickened by how people have been using other peoples' misery for their own political purposes or profit. For example, I saw a commercial for dish washing liquid with people washing animals, etc. They're profiting from misery. I'm sure Hollywood will be jumping on the bandwagon, if they haven't already.

Thanks so much for posting this one, Jack. It's beautiful and means a lot to me.