From a distance
the white houses and white churches glow,
poetry on a hillside.
Passing through
in our technological tube,
Norton, Virginia comes
and goes, a cosmopolitan crumb
sustained by dwindling black blood
pumping through railroad  veins.
Approaching closer,
dilapidated shacks and crumbling shelters lean toward chaos.
Rusty pickups clutter littered garages.
In weedy yards, pocked by angular bushes,
plastic gnomes and elves pose, motionless,
(for show)
tacky plastic mythology-
imitation city-
And the white houses and white churches remain
ust poetry.
(on the hillside)

I wrote this after a train ride through Norton, VA. I tired to describe the sweet melancholy I felt at these signs of cultural decay accompanied by stubborn clinging to existence.