Roy Herndon Smith
The melancholy
mood of the vacation town
in the off season,
the closed shops, empty
tables in cafés, sparsely
populated streets,
solitary teen
stuck working in the nearly
vacant IGA,
the decaying homes
with unkempt yards, wind moaning
through wild-branching trees
whispering, “Clueless
tumbleweeds, you blow alone
over the earth you
think you are not of,
destroy all you light on, and
fall unremembered,
blaming us, the air,
the waters, the earth, the life
you exterminate,
for the terror and
despair you make and seek to
forever escape.”
dust 