City Life

in your heart – you’re cold
these walls of steel and concrete, glass
hold only pain and death

dying from life they’re
ripped from their roots
and this earth is replaced with
you

I’ve never known these
smells sights taste sound
that makes a city life
and death

you break entrance –
you break entrance to the woods
and fields and streams that made
my life
paving the roads and developing the countryside and
killing the life that’s been living for longer than
any of us

the day they build a Wal-Mart in my hometown
is the day I’ll know
that that world is over

where is my Florida?
not these false, fake, sculpted, trees, bushes,
planted palm trees to make us look more
authentic
those plants that
shape the side streets of anything real natural and beautiful

I am disgusted by these tears
springing from the world like acid rain
washing away the color and life
that I can no longer find

you can’t find life in a dead land
but death is taking this land and ripping it apart
from the outside
in

every year the city moves closer to my tiny town
every year more of our acres are cut
and sold to the highest bidder
every year the wild land is developed
and the concrete is planted where once stood
sanity and strength and soul of the land

last year, they paved my road
and I cried, I sobbed
oh I had my days when I hated the rocks
potholes, fallen branches and
rain that would wash it all away
but there was beauty in that place

then three years ago,
I got my first neighbor
moved in and cleared six acres of trees
the best blackberries and the best tree forts I’d ever built
in order to build his house
and I had a premonition
our humble back-country ways were over
and with time this place would
be a rich little suburb and the city
would swallow it whole

where is my Florida?
I spent my childhood barefoot and happy
miles of woods and swamp to wander through and
claim as my own
didn’t fear rape or robbery but
water moccasins, alligators and
breaking my neck in a tree-fall

and I can’t go back to that
that place will be developed, a small section
of it roped off as a state park
made for walking through and camping and ‘getting back to nature’
that world forgotten

and what can we do to stop the oncoming
destroying destruction, decapitation of this land that I love
a lover a friend a parent that I am watching die
who here knows CPR?  do we need surgery
or is it too far gone
declared brain dead and we should
spare the land by
pulling the plug?

I don’t have a solution
I don’t have a solution to any of this I only have my fears and my knowledge and
my sadness as I watch it ripped away

right now, our town still hovers at 500 residents
right now the townspeople grumble about driving an hour to pick up milk and bread
and the same man has been mayor for over fifteen years
we still have far more churches than stores

but how long will the quaint cute and country life still flourish

and I moved here
I moved to this city and felt the life drain out of me
faster than I thought life left
I grew tired and cold and irritable and I said
I need trees
I need to feel dirt between my toes and I need out
but the best education is not found in a small town
has no elementary school so
certainly no college
but I ache for that life that is gone
and I have to touch these false fake trees because even
sculpted planted pruned life is still life

I mourn for the Florida that is dying every year
and cannot come back
and anger at the passage of time and the commercialization
that cuts the life away to build strip malls and
McDonalds

And in this death
what can you do
but live