NOBODY KNOWS THE PLACE
errol miller
“After a hundred years, nobody knows the place.”
Emily Dickinson
Always there is art
in the prune-like faces of the tenants
for each action a reaction, an empty field
of Johnson grass until the builders come
they sniff around and make it level
and throw up human villages
one of them is home, an enduring
simple place of birth where the grocer
lived and died, in the red-clay hills of then
claw-like roots grew in native soil
and loving flourished, they may have
built a rose-factory there
or a humming cotton mill to lure
the Delta’s labor, all the comings
all the goings, births and deaths and dyings
with crepe paper for the weddings
and legal papers for divorces, yet we all
were there in that transverse magic
of byb-slap to send us dancing
believing in Cinderella and a little change
until the Interstate cut through
and the mall went up
and Mama and Papa quietly died
and we felt our frail pulse
and looked out the window at new construction
1984 or Europia or Star City, definitely
not the Main Street of the 40’s
cry if you must, I cannot help you
I too am lost in unfamiliar muddy fields
stranded in the future, calling home
collect there is no answer, how
are the mundane poppies in Suburbia this year
the ever-barking dogs, the stillness
of the silvery night after
the last candles are blown out
in platonic small-town sad cafes.
