—From a collage by Marsha Connell
Rolling imprecisely from the military cavalcade
Ambivalent shockwaves rolling
toward a shore pierced with shadows
of houses and picket fences at dawn.
A loose sun and swirling fiery skies
battle against cerulean mountains.
A city that takes pride in its tombstones
is tucked in under a thin blanket of snow.
There is comfort in knowing
the ancestors sleep at the foot of the city.
The statue—is it Saint Joan? Flying,
one wing bent skyward,
touching the big blue marble of earth,
bringing its image back down to the ground.
Marsha said she lived near the great Johnstown flood.
She said she could see the watermarks,
the houses where people perished by water and by fire.
She said: This was where I was living
when I got the news that my father died.
I lived in the hills above Johnstown,
there are no roads to Johnstown.
No roads to get out, all those houses
jammed up against the bridge, bursting into flames.
I can’t shake the scenes of those floods,
they said it would never happen but it did,
a strange alignment of planets, the cold winter light
made the flood happened the statue is real,
all the unidentified dead.
Summer 1991
Rolling imprecisely from the military cavalcade
Ambivalent shockwaves rolling
toward a shore pierced with shadows
of houses and picket fences at dawn.
A loose sun and swirling fiery skies
battle against cerulean mountains.
A city that takes pride in its tombstones
is tucked in under a thin blanket of snow.
There is comfort in knowing
the ancestors sleep at the foot of the city.
The statue—is it Saint Joan? Flying,
one wing bent skyward,
touching the big blue marble of earth,
bringing its image back down to the ground.
Marsha said she lived near the great Johnstown flood.
She said she could see the watermarks,
the houses where people perished by water and by fire.
She said: This was where I was living
when I got the news that my father died.
I lived in the hills above Johnstown,
there are no roads to Johnstown.
No roads to get out, all those houses
jammed up against the bridge, bursting into flames.
I can’t shake the scenes of those floods,
they said it would never happen but it did,
a strange alignment of planets, the cold winter light
made the flood happened the statue is real,
all the unidentified dead.
Summer 1991
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