Pocatello by Leonard M HawkesOld Town
South Arthur, Garfield, West Benton,
And that southwest (now cemented)
Slicing of the Portneuf:
It's in the blood--more an intuition
Than a vision or a memory.
After more than a century
It calls still, southward, seasonally,
To the lost dream, to love, to light,
And now to the scattered--
Who have never known the old home.
I. S. U.
A throwback to at least the 70's,
Almost another world
In its architecture, acreage and alignment.
I can smell those musty halls
Before I even enter--
Perhaps much more of me
In reach here, than in my own
Updated, rejuvenated Alma Mater.
And the workmen in the service tunnels
Are listening to "Rap."
Ross Park
Surely there are snakes there,
In those cliffy, burnt-black igneous rocks.
As a child I feared some sudden violent eruption,
A gushing forth of deep superheated liquid
To incinerate my innocence
Or smother up my fragile youth.
But now it is the certainty of snakes
Venomously hidden to bite me
To a less spectacular, but more deserved
And even certain death.
08/16/2007 Author's Note: Three photos of the ancestral home in thirty lines
Posted on 08/17/2007 Copyright © 2024 Leonard M Hawkes
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