This Village

[the mingo]

a hundred & twenty years ago
this village was a hopping place -
gainful commerce/ mills/ dams/ jobs
society/ events/ parades/ parties/ dances
today in the village graveyard
all those movers & shakers
farmers & trainmen
moneymakers & dancers
husbands & wives
rest unseen beneath ground
marked by dated stones
& covered by grass

[WIREMAN]

do ya feel it still

[judih]

feel the grass vibrate
energy remains

[the mingo]

Mark, can't say as I feel it so much as I am able to imagine it from seeing the things that are left. State of Yew Nork is rotten with towns & villages whose heyday was the 19th century and then declined as the world changed from one thing to another. The nearest village to me, and the one that inspired the poem began to take off when the dam was built across the Little Salmon River. Many of these villages began the same way, as mill towns. The decline of most of these places began with the First World War and the Depression signaled the end of what had been the "good old days" - after that most places were good only for poems but i've always felt at home with ghosts and my bike has no problem with them either

[the mingo]

judih, energy may remain but the names have almost disappeared outside the gates of local graveyards - for me it's not so much a sadness as it is a strange sort of longing that arises within - to experience what was face first, not from books or stories (though stories are the next best thing ) and not romantically either but with my own hands so to speak - from the saddle of my bike i can sometimes see the bones of it all, but never the flesh.

I'm a transient among transience.

Hell yeah, Mongolia

[whoaisme]

keep it going aww yea mingo!

[the mingo]

Thx, whoaisme, i try to stay on the roll

[WIREMAN]

roll on like a big river.....

[judih]

like jazz-driven tumbleweed

[Steve Plonk]

I sometimes feel like a tumbling tumbleweed. Mingo, this poem is a stark reminder
that all is temporary around the airwaves, etc.

[the mingo]

thx folks

[mtmynd]

once a town gives all of it's being with nothing left, that town ceases to be... turning into dust.

[the mingo]

Cec - great state of Yew Nork is rotten with places like these - and in every case the core industries, usually a water driven mill of some sort, have long since fallen to the tides of time & change. Some of these villages were founded at the crossing of two routes. Someone would build a store there or a stage stop. Someone else would build a small hotel. People continue to live in these places, the same old houses being sold & sold again but the core is gone or sometimes changed. Sometimes, as you noted, there is nothing left but a crossroads with the grass growing to the edge of the road and the wind that blows across it.