A Dying Rose after the Rain (a poem)

A Dying Rose
after the Rain


The wind blows low, its sand
Lonely it seems, my youth now
Houses gone, the grass grows wild
In empty lots—
I walked the back dirt path
(a while ago, the very one I walked
as a child),
I’m remembering the autumns
And winters, the seasons changing!
It all looked so desolate,
“There’s no neighborhood left,”
I said to myself aloud.
Just high heaps of this and that
Grass and trees and asphalt
street…!
Who brought this to pass?
Who tore down the everything
that was, and for what?
For an empty street, and
parking lot (of no cars).
Who has brought the army of
engineers down here
With tractors and trailers and
giant plows!
That’s what I pondered then
and now: contemporary
Barbarians…I suppose.
It’s like sorrowful rain, burning
returning!
Now in memory I walk that same
old lane, the only thing that
Hasn’t changed, though old I
Am, and young I was back then,
And soon to be forgotten
As if feed to the lions and tigers
Of the new generation:
I fell like a dying rose, after
the rain!...

No: 2797 (9-19-2010)