My Hometown

A tired town on the Ohio banks,
with similar sisters in sorrow
just across the river,

It seemed so large
when I was small.
The day-to-day sameness,
of growing up, tomorrow's certainties.
The outside rarely visited.
The wide-eyed security of youth.

It was the largest city in the area,
with half-traveled streets,
and vacant lots
waiting for their grant money.
The municipal evolution
in full unfunded progress process.

The hospitals and Churches
seem indistinguishable
except for attendance.
Offering healing and redemption,
and hope of an eternal afterlife of joy
and hope of an afterlife
if all else failed.

The City Fathers,
with their generational politics
and old boys congregation, and blissful ignorance,riding the town into the ,  dirt,like their daddies did
heap on the nickle-and-dime tax hikes
to revive the infrastructure, but its like
building a bridge with one end -
a "passage" to nowhere.


    I left at a relatively early age,
    in pursuit of a faster, better life.
    Golden California beckoned
    and I joined the rush.
    The new Melting Pot in microcosm.
          




    And the years passed so quickly,
    the pot constantly stirred
    but the constituents never combined.
    The promise never realized.
    The Golden glow faded and tarnished.