What's coming

Today we needed to get out. The rain all day Saturday washed in sun and hard wind. Not walking weather when there are so many trees, so we took a drive down through Casey and Collinsville up the Interstate for a bit and then chose a random exit and began looking for downtown New Douglas. This is a little farming community that is about forty miles from Saint Louis. The landscape at this time of year is bare and I’m always lost when we drive like this, the lack of landmarks (couldn’t you put some mountains somewhere, Illinois?) throw me. The little towns here seem to go in two directions, some are just adorable and some are sad. New Douglas falls into the sadder category, a lot of dilapidated houses, a couple of boarded up businesses, but it’s par for the course with this economy and the pandemic that no one wants to address. The uniting theme of New Douglas seems to be the Trump signs and flags. It reminded me of a poem I wrote in May while taking a workshop with James Crews (a Zoom workshop, which I did not care for, the platform, not the workshop). The assignment was to write a praise poem to something you wouldn’t normally praise. And we had just taken a Sunday drive to go look at a little country church that was for sale, always looking for the next house of Hope. 😊 So here’s the poem, here’s a couple of pictures out near New Douglas where the sky is deep and wide and you’d think you could see what was coming for you.

Praise Song
            ~after Barbara Crooker
 

Praise the cracked silo and the vine
covered John Deere. Praise the algae
filled pond and the plate-less Pontiac.
Praise the brown headed cowbird
the most perfect colonizer.
 
Praise the sagging porch, the tarped
roof and the woman too tired to wave.
Praise the Dollar General, the Dollar Tree,
the Dollar Store and Maurice’s Five ‘N Dime.
 
Praise the yard sign Make America Great Again.
Praise the rebel flag, praise the lost cause of it all.
Praise the patriot and the common folk.
Praise those that persist in shadow. Praise
whatever it takes for them to look down on me.