Universal Summer Blue
tires bumping and dust rising
we rattle past fields of unkind soil
along a dirt-forgotten road
the ethereal sky
sings out its universal summer blue
and rolling hills (which I, in ignorance,
call mountains)
bid us round the bend
a lopsided road sign bears witness to
Dunsville, Pop. 207,
where a string of injured houses
lurch hopefully towards the road
we hurl past
a weary paint-chipped barn
the carcasses of two corroded cars
abandoned in the yard
a boarded up schoolhouse
its yard of laughter silenced
flashes by
a young girl in an oversized pastel dress,
squeezing a smile from her pinched face,
hangs from the fence
her scrawny arms protrude from cartoon sleeves
faded, shoeless,
she waits
~ Melodie Corrigall
Melodie Corrigall’s work has appeared in Women and Words, Imagining, Room, Horizon, Dalhousie Review, Toasted Cheese, Blue Skies Poetry, Thunderclap, The November 3rd Club and Other Voices.
Read more of Melodie Corrigall’s poetry:
– Ninety Years Young
– Dreams Lost
Road trip with a 21st Century Jode family;
Brilliantly, dryly sad and beautiful. Great
writing, poignantly evocative. Thank you
for these pictures of your passing.
Lois – Ottawa, Canada