I wrote this last year while pushing the baby stroller on the remaining paths through the fields of rural Switzerland, where I now live. I was thinking about sprawl and the farms of home. You see, the land here is so pricey, people build large rectangular apartment buildings in former corn fields straight up to the sky in order to maximize the price per square meter. The landscape is changing so quickly, we cannot remember what things looked like a year or even a month ago. Can you imagine it in your own backyard? Here is another poem:
Feet on the ground
Family farm
Head in the clouds
Building ground
Planning our Paradise
My kids and I
High-rise rectangles
Touch the sky
View past the lake
Unobstructed
Cell phone towers
There constructed
Top of the hill
Valley below
Green
And brown
And yellow glow
Asphalt
Concrete
Black and white
Sunlight bouncing
Steals my sight
The hoof
The boots
The little shoes
Follow the path
That is the view
Under the fence
Or over the bale
Leaving only
Some pony tail
In the grass
Ankle deep
Under rocks
Where crayfish sleep
Hidden treasures
Predator, prey
Along the creek
Slipping away
Gone are the fences
That never excluded
Absent the stink
That hadn’t intruded
Soon sitting clean
In cozy apartments
With a view at the back
To the neighbors’ compartments.
excerpt from “The Chain Letter Incident” by Cathy Lynn (c) 2011
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