These Parts

Some parts have regenerated not backwards, local history cannot be expunged with a backhoe and eraser. There are facilities, collection plants, distributions centers, storage units. Where once summer sky’s grazed there are mechanical cows and the rusting bull horns of the defunct. Creeks and backwaters limp through new tracts where above ground pools snort weekend waves. The hunting of discarded artifacts keeps idle hands busy. Self-taught archivists plunder each other for the re-purposeful or uselessly rare, indeed the useless is now prized as a future barter. Pigs and chickens are hidden under muddy blue or grey plastic sheets. Farms lean away into makeshift facsimiles of yesterday. Of course there is the mail, parcels arrive with a smile, then contents are ferreted away until more garage space can be reimagined. It is a fair, windy, open place; it is what a native people tried once to explain to us In their legends. of course they never spoke of strip malls or industrial parks, but in their own, less cluttered language, they did point the way to our own pointless purgatory.