A Visit To The Small Town Cemetary Poem by Lonnie Hicks

The tomb stones were dusty gray and evocative.

'The Coal vein gave out and left us with dust.'

'Our town was boom, bust and bust.'

'The new high-way passed us by'

'The drought killed the crops and prosperity for us.'

'Our kids went to the city abandoning us'

'The capitalists sucked us dry.'

'Nafta took everything we had left'

'The plant closed and we got unemployment'

Agribusiness bought all the land and put in condos'

'We lost out to development'

'The banks stopped making us loans for seed and equipment.'

'The river got polluted and the tourists stopped'

Spectures of pioneer ghosts and generations past
confronted me asking
'What have you done?
We died here for this land
now it is all gone?

We carried water from the river bank
for the house and the live stock;
built the gables from board planks
and imported cedar;
Carried great grandmothers piano
by wagon-train from across the sea;
eight thousand miles to hear our children play and sing
of future hopes and dreams.

Our town is map-less memory now
gone with the next consensus
entombed in photographs sepia
in immigrant notes and letters;
Indians and Negroes,
Irish and Italians
Latvians and Poles.
Swedish and Norwegian hard scrabble
French fishermen
religion-hungry congregants
German peasants
English rejects
second sons
opiates;
tobacco and slaves
locomotives and trains
all crowded onto the landscape
tossing up dicey yearnings
for a better life
all to come crashing down now
in this place
this small town cemetery.'

I lacked an answer for the future
except to remind them all that
they had no choice but
to build their own.

'But how' they contested
'Do we grant a tax haven to Wal-mart.?
Do we sell the air and water rights to private companies?
Do we open up new coal pits to exploit
and damn the consequence?

'Should we let them dump Uranium
atop the mountain and let it seep
years from now
into our kids mouths?

Do we kill ourselves slowly to avoid
death and dying?

How do we raise the already dead?

The last struck me full in the chest
while another Specter said
'Are our choices abandonment,
stagnation or staying dead?

'With what tool will we use
to fashion the future
and get our kids back
our town back
our history back
our lives back.'

So dim their eyes-
blurry countenances-
I could barely see
with whom I was conversing
and in the background under
cemetery night
I could hear still
that sucking sound;
another developer
sucking the blood life
out of another town.

'Even as we speak' Specter said
'another town gets dead.
We all are soon to be
across all the land
wall-to-wall factories
separated only by polluted streams,
bad air
and spreading disease.

Shall we build bubbles around
the special elites and their minions
and let the rest of the world go to hell?

Shall we abandon most of life
as it had been known-
retreat into sealed enclaves-
and mountain tops
waiting for the hungry masses to come banging
on our doors with hatchets, machetes and soured hopes?

Shaken, I began to dream a daytime dream
and asked what if:

'What if you take what you started with
your bare hands
and re-built with things you didn't have to purchase?

'Things free and hard work, labor that isn't slavery maybe
something which is not guaranted but might work.

What if the billions now in Corporate coffers were brought
back to the folks who earned it first
and those billions given back to them for the Recontruction?

What if technology solar and the power -grid could make
small towns net generators of energy
not consumers and dependent?

What if there was no currency, no money
and things vital to life be merely exchanged
for labor freely contributed?
My need is supplied by you and others money free.
I reciprocate when you need and things get done.
Here is a role for the young. Besides there are no
jobs in the cities.

After all what would you do if I gave you a million bucks
you hire me to build your house. Let's skip the middle step
and exchange that value without the banks.

Might work-might not
but at least we would get rid of the banks and their cut.
If we are the consumers and creators of all wealth
then lets consume in ways that are good for us;

not those who abandoned us for cheap labor over seas
and shiny new cars and bank accounts in Switzerland.
.
I could see tombstones cracking-
interest among the already dead reviving-
coming back to life.

Just maybe
some said
that could work.
We will see.
Because like it or not
things will happen whether
we plan for it or not.
Best to plan for the change.