being and becoming

My poem, “Blue Spaces” appears today on Griffin Poetry’s web site as part of the Earth Day (every day) honoring of our planet. A poem by fellow Songster, Natalie Canavor appears on the site as well.

Poetry and Earth – Water

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Blue Spaces Elegy     *

 Anchored by a wide, lazy creek, the street I live on

climbs to a four-square farmhouse on the bluff

with its dilapidated carriage stable standing sentry;

the old barn collapsed years ago.

The land along our street— clay now,

once pristine blue space.

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Long ago, the farmer grew corn and tobacco on this land.

A lane, rutted and raw descended from barn

 to creek through blue space.

The plow, farmhands, and wagons piled with the harvests

moved down to the creek and up the lane,

and the farmer’s family prospered.

 . 

Skiffs plied the creek and brought their catch

to the farmer’s dock at the end of the lane.

The creek’s rich stock of Bay crabs and fish

surpassed the land’s bounty.

And the lane morphed into a gravel road

where rusty pickups ladened with

bushels of crabs and shellfish came and went.

And the farmer’s family prospered.

 . 

When the depleted land failed,

the farmer sold it as lots to watermen

and small clapboard cottages popped up beside the creek.

But the watermen’s catch dwindled;

and town folks bought the plots, tore down the cottages

and built sturdy ranchers and split-levels with driveways.

Curbs were added, and the gravel road was paved,

burying three small tributaries beneath the street,

cutting off the spring water that fed the old creek.

When the rains came, soil and lawn fertilizer

washed down the paved street, over the

buried springs, into the tired creek,

but the farmer’s family prospered.

 . 

The old farmhouse watched;

the carriage stable and barn emptied.

The farmer and the farmer’s wife died.

The neighborhood grew.

Builders came and went.

People prospered,

homes expanded.

The creek bed clogged with silt and runoff.

The farm was gone, the watermen were gone

from the now brown and turgid creek,

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and the farmer’s family lives

somewhere else.

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Janice F. Booth

*    Blue spaces are environments with prominent water features known to improve our well-being, similar to “green spaces.”. 

Thank you, Bill, for this opportunity to let my work speak, in my own small way, of the earth’s suffering. Having lived on my creek-side street for over 40 years, I have watched changes both micro and macro in the tiny part of the planet I inhabit.  I was moved to write this poem as our creek turned brown and thick with algae from the winter run-off and spring rains. 

— Janice

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