Long (winning) Poem

Ode to Community

  

Town, I am one main street with stores on either side. 

A bank, a service station, a post office.

Four churches.  People gather there for prayers and forgiveness.  Others say they are hypocrites because they are in church.  But the sinners inside know who they are.  By amazing grace, not creed, healed and free.

In the courtyard stands a monument to soldiers who have died in war,

  wreath of flowers from Memorial Day beginning to fade.

And what a parade!

Scouts march by troop, and classic convertibles hold the VIPS, waving to the crowds lining the sidewalks.  Fire trucks and floats.

Vietnam veterans come silently up the street.  Finally, we applaud.  Proud now.  It took a while.

*

City, here

where architecture silhouettes across the sky, tall boxes rising;

and life is faster paced, with the sound of sirens always in the background.

Taxis honk and weave.  Bright lights flash on building sides.

Vendors hawk their wares.

People walk down the streets, looking neither to the right nor left,

but if asked, willingly help a stranger.

Musicals and ballet and operas; high fashion

and fine restaurants, food from every nation imaginable, and people speaking many languages.  Immigrants by the boatload, who came and still do

from sea to shining sea,

to see and taste and feel freedom’s promise, and make a home, a life.

When names are read at graduation, new sounds confound us.

*

Village limits,

settled in 1797, when the first blush of pioneers cut their way through the wilderness.

Now Friday night football reigns; and a well known diner feeds the travelers passing through, fries and pies—homemade all.

Where once there was a country store, now long gone, consumed by

  mega mart or mall.

The library still stands;  now boasts internet as well as books.

Firemen are volunteers. Small churches have closed their doors.

Slower paced here, in a world of speed.

*

Crossroads is about all there is here, where

two lanes converge on a lonely road.  The roads tend to be named after families who have lived here for generations, landowners.  The houses don’t have numbers.  They are named as often after the families who used to own them, as by their current residents. 

It is a place where everyone tends to be related.

Memories are long, and notions fixed.

  Where purple mountain majesty rises

above the fruited plain. 

Caves are buried beneath the surface,

and black hills whisper ancient mystery;  Chief Crazy Horse

gets etched in stone.

The black delta stretches flat as far as the eye can see.

Farmers who once ginned cotton grow catfish now,

  lamenting a way of life long gone,

shattered by a long and weary war. Blue coats. Gray coats.

Red blood.

*

Suburban houses come in rows, not so far apart;

And not so far away are malls with many stores and possibilities.

Children play with other children on their block.  They play together, kick the can,

and wait together for the bus.

Mothers now work until dusk, or more.

Still, they make sure their children have every advantage of sport and dance,

club and course, keepers of the calendar.

Computers rule, and tweets and texts, always in touch,

though rarely to any depth, sadly.

Manicured lawns, gardens too, though only a few

grow food.

No one eats at the table together at night; on the go, on the move.

Country, rolling and green, breadbasket,

with neighbors in the distance, over the hill.

They came to help rebuild our barn when it burned last year.  They came from miles around in their pickup trucks, and gave a day, bringing their hammers and sweat, their food and their willingness. Thirty or more showed up at once. 

It brought tears to my eyes that people could be that generous, and

that good.  I don’t know how they did it, having their own cows to milk.  But here they were. We worked and ate and laughed.  New barn bones were born by the time dark came to the country, where tractors hum, and you can hear the corn grow.

*

Houseboat upon the sea, where I live in my little ship, the two of us

floating from place to place, docking for tonight at the inlet in Freeport,  with its strip of lights and shops and restaurants.  I sit and drink my beer and watch the tourists passing by.  I know the shopkeepers are hoping for a sale. Seashells and trinkets, magnets and lighthouses.  All things nautical.

To warmer ports I shall go, before the cold comes.  

My boat is my home, waves my streets, fish my friends.

Still, I am never lonely, here upon the sea

Where I choose to live, my boat and me.

Old salts find one another at docks and ports, and form their own fraternity.

* 

Community binds us and expects things from us:

to volunteer;  to lead, to serve, to raise funds,

to be firemen, jurors, school board members, city council folk.

Community nurtures us,

through teachers, neighbors, grandmothers.

Educates our children and gathers us into zip codes, hometowns, teams.

We may come from a community defined by faith or nation;

by interest or inclination.

  Quilters, actors, soccer players, motorcyclists, senior citizens.

Community makes demands of us. May love and disappoint us too.

America the melting pot, with open arms. Embracing Iraqi in Nebraska;  Lost boys of Sudan in Syracuse.

We need the shape and form community brings, to fit us in,

the sense that this is who we are, where we belong, 

Where people know our names.

 Not just place, but purpose.  

It isn’t free. This belonging comes with a price.

It demands that we participate. It makes us who we are.

Gives us our identity.

Community.