Molly in the Dust
By ice rivers
- 942 reads
This is a poem/photo of depression era 1930's Midwest America when topsoil was blown into the air and the air became dust and the dust became poison.
Lips scabbed raw, she can't pucker to whistle.
In dust Molly dwindles to skin and bone
Surviving on prickly Russian thistle
This humble year, proud soapweed thrives alone.
While her heart breaks, her kids crawl and cluster
The Bank forecloses mortgage on her brother.
Her shrouded brown eyes shred their last lustre
Watching one farm fail after another.
A wheatbinder ruffles over with sand
Bleached horse bones haunt a dirt filled water hole
A half buried plowshare makes its last stand.
Depression life in this Jayhawk dust bowl.
The cattle run in circles breathing mud
Suffocating with Kansas in their blood.
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Comments
Written with feeling, and I
Written with feeling, and I like the straightforward rhyme scheme.
I particularly liked the first and last lines, though they draw such sad scenes, but they are very effective.
I guess they reaped some of the ignorance of how the prairies were developed without understanding of the precariousness they were bringing in with the hurried changes of farming. Rhiannon
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