Our Old Place
by Carol L. Skolnick

Come on back; I'll show you
Where eggplants once hung
Like pendulous purple breasts
And rodents sampled bumpy tubers
Beneath the weedy soil
Here's where children ate and splashed and ran
Where grasses were burnt and bleached
By smoldering cigarettes and the sun
Where it would still smell of animal spores
Would still be tunnelled by teems of segmented slimers
Still be nourished by caring hands and sharp tools
That dug and weeded and planted seed
And left bits of bread and fat for visitors
Feathered and furry, who came to dine.

There's black tarmac now and stone cement
No life now, no children or birds or beasts,
No insects, trees, or flowers, and no hope of growth
But I still see our old place
As it sprung up from the minerals
And rot and heat of the earth's womb 
Its shrieks of life as it emerged green
And wet and sucking rain
And how it offered nourishment as it matured
And smelled of feces and sex and its ultimate death.

c2001 by Carol L. Skolnick



Music is "Exile" by Enya