Poetry
•
2007 -
Hillary
Kay
• Wet Footprints Over
Tractor Treads - Hal Bogotch
2007
by
Hillary
Kaye
the
new year is about to come
we bring it in with
tears and guns
we bring it in with joy and
hope
we bring it in with towering
ghosts.
the
new year does it start out fresh?
while others
die at our
bequest?
I
wish I had a brighter song
To inspire us
to right the wrongs
Round and
round
and round
again
I wish there was a way we
knew
To make the new year really
new,
.
-------
WET
FOOTPRINTS OVER TRACTOR TREADS
I
bought new tires for my car.
First thing I did,
I drove down
to Venice Beach. Tires.
Shoes
for the car. I hate those
analogies
that machines are like
people,
or people are like
machines.
What does a machine know of the
ocean,
the sparkle of sunlight in the
shallows,
a bird with a long
beak
pecking into the moist
sand,
then retreating from the
surf.
I have never been like a machine,
cold
and blind, not feeling the north
wind
on my skin, not caring about
myself
or anything or anybody, not knowing
love
or food or sex or
poetry.
The merchants in Venice feel
pain
if you kick them, feel aches in their
ears
and in their lungs from the
bulldozers,
earthmoving trucks, ignorant
machines
that try to keep the ocean from
washing
the merchants
away.
A person who runs a machine for a
living
is not a machine, but is married to
one.
Has to live with its flaws, its
noise,
its mess. Has to suffer when it
breaks
down. Can only get a divorce with
approval
from the State. Must show just
cause.
Grounds for divorce might be an
injury
at the hands of the machine. But
machines
dont have hands, goddammit. I have
hands
that were injured hitting the keys of a
computer,
wounded trying to tell the machines
what to do.
What to do. I dont want my life
linked
to machines any
more.
I take off my shoes, my socks, roll
up the bottoms
of my jeans into cuffs, sling my
canvas bag
over my shoulder and walk, the
incomprehensible
immensity of the sea barely
getting my feet wet,
finally coming up to my
ankles.
Posted: Fri - December
1, 2006 at 05:57 PM