Suburbanization has destroyed my old, familiar places as surely as any other great disaster.

Copyright 2008, Jerry W. Engler





Shunga Nunga,
living pathway of all,
beautiful stream of childhood gone
looping your way between
the green grassy hills of home
down to the very bedrock
of everything that has been before.

Bullheads and bluegill
lived in the shade of
your geat masthead trees
while blue-green dragonflies
added more sheen
above the ripples
on your many bends and curves.

You no longer slowly
make your way below
the high wooden bridge
on the bend by Marilyn's,
or wander by the goat farm
below the ancient hill
named for Chief Burnet
because your way
has been laid straight.

You were stretched to lie
like a giant gut ripped
from the bowels of the earth,
your life left to dry
in the sun
and at night
before the orange-red
glowing embers of
your years of timber growth.

Bulldozers piled the
ruptured piles of black soil
and yellow-white clays until
they could be laid over by the miles
of asphalt and concrete,
houses and stores
to leave you a canal
with the trees slowly growing
as the harbingers of life
try to replace
the hundred thousand years
of vitality green growth
along the promise of
the drainage sewer.

What childhood is it now
to remember the sterility of
your hard-surfaced drainage
and your floating flock
of fast food cups
and plastic bags?

Shunga Nunga,
the tennis courts
are nice,
and the people can get
more than a hundred
channels to look at
instead of looking
at you.