Paradise Parking Lot stands
Near a stand of trees,
     Deformed, misshapen,
As the creek rilling down
     Its middle smells of sulfur
          From a long-forgotten mine.
Woods encroach slowly, filling the paths
Of the booted feet,
The tractors and tow trucks,
     Who rattled their chains like
     The ghosts
 They have become.
Vining vines entangle themselves
     About rusting fenders,
     Bumpers losing chrome in flakes,
     And rotting seats which
          Serve to fertilize
          Many a hungry fungus.
The tombstone for one memory
     Is a rusting radiator
     Standing stark
     In front of one fenderless
          Shell of doorless, glassless
          Metal ---
The marker supported by
     A frame buried,
          Indecently,
     In the soft clay mud;
A blooming strand of
     Three leafed ivy for a wreath.
 

9/21/79

Index     The Picnic