Thursday, March 31, 2011

My Buffalo Anniversary

I arrived in Buffalo, April 1st, 2008.  All my years abroad I never imagined coming back here to live nor did I expect to stay.  I arrived that day, spotting a pile of blackened snow in a parking lot and asking what it was.  A few months have turned into longer.   An astrologer  told me it was "essential for my soul's growth" to experience this past in a different way.  My first question was, but do I have to stay here?  But I have, at least for awhile.

The poem is still in draft form so don't be too critical!



                             Love this Place
Am I to love this place,
no bridges arch
over a glittering city.
No gargoyles keep watch.

To love this place
where steel mills lay fallow,
hunks of metal shade
gutted homes.
Past the Michigan Avenue
Baptist Church,
my mother and father
enter home on their wedding day,
She dreams of white
And thresholds
 to be carried across.

Love this place,
drip drop of ice
slides off eaves,  
like so many promises.
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3 comments:

  1. Chera ThompsonApril 1, 2011 at 3:46 AM

    Homecoming on April 1...is that an omen? Maybe more like stranger in a familiar land.

    ReplyDelete
  2. trudy's brunchApril 1, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    I feel the same way. stuck in a homely place with good people. what's it about?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Terez PeipinsApril 2, 2011 at 8:21 AM

    Sort of familiar. I grew up in Varysburg so visiting Buffalo in the 60's meant going to the city. I did go to school here- but one year I spent abroad so 3 years, then I went to New York, came back a year or two and that was about it. But I do consider it home. Homely I'm not sure about. I agree with you Trudy. The poem came out of feeling stuck.

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