The Flood
The Flood:
There was a highway over pass in their neighborhood. It had been built as part of Urban Renewal in the 60s, cutting through a large black neighborhood, and forcing the displaced residents into the newly built housing project nearby.
Now the construction was just a memory.
One not even their own.
The two boys sit beneath the underpass.
The road beneath it is torn up in patches, revealing large swathes of grey paving stones that make the cars rumble clumsily as they pass.
One boy says to the other ‘how is it that some people’s homes are a road… and others live in a dead end?’
The other boy doesn’t respond, instead he kicks at the broken asphalt
Crumbled tar skids across the street.
And the history of a place asks.
‘when will this flood ever recede?’
And the earth beneath it all
speaks in a low rumble
‘ I see only rain’
There was a highway over pass in their neighborhood. It had been built as part of Urban Renewal in the 60s, cutting through a large black neighborhood, and forcing the displaced residents into the newly built housing project nearby.
Now the construction was just a memory.
One not even their own.
The two boys sit beneath the underpass.
The road beneath it is torn up in patches, revealing large swathes of grey paving stones that make the cars rumble clumsily as they pass.
One boy says to the other ‘how is it that some people’s homes are a road… and others live in a dead end?’
The other boy doesn’t respond, instead he kicks at the broken asphalt
Crumbled tar skids across the street.
And the history of a place asks.
‘when will this flood ever recede?’
And the earth beneath it all
speaks in a low rumble
‘ I see only rain’