at the edge of comfortable town
\nthere is a sludge lagoon
\nthat used to be a lake
\nyou can tell because it looks like a lake
\nexcept for the dun color
\nand the fact that you can walk on it
\nand the trees that used to live
\non its fringes are all dead
\nkind of like a war museum
\nyou can go there and enjoy the silence
\nthere\u2019s nothing alive there to distract you
\nripples and trees and birds and breath
\nbut if you don\u2019t mind that
\nit\u2019s kind of nice kind of ice in fact
\nin winter it still looks just like a lake<\/p>\n
at the edge of comfortable town
\nthere is a mine that used to
\nfill the lagoon with its tailings
\nand the air with its smelting smog
\nthat used to hang sulphuric on the edge
\nof the sky, giving the lake and the sour woods
\na sort of cauldron-of-the-volcano pallor
\nsuch as Dante must have seen in his mind
\nwhen his spirit frequented the lower regions
\nof the Inferno. If you were to frequent
\nthe mine\u2019s lower regions, you would
\nfind yourself under a sky that was made of
\nprecambrian stone a mile thick
\nwhere a simple shrug of the earth \u2014
\ndemonstrates the zen of one huge hand clapping
\nWhen I worked down there for a short time,
\nI used to think about the people
\non the surface far above me
\nliving up there on the rock clouds
\nliving their lives going to their work
\nand I would realize in an instant the absolute
\na prisoner must feel when he knows
\nthere is no access to the other side of the door.<\/p>\n
At the edge of comfortable town
\nI sit right now waiting for the phone to ring,
\nwaiting for the casual conversation
\nthat will be broadcast on TV and look
\nso cool and yet be of me caught on a track
\nbound to a train that will not stop
\nuntil we have passed my destination
\nand I wonder why I came here.
\nAnd I wonder why I came here.
\nAnd I wonder why I came here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
at the edge of comfortable town there is a sludge lagoon that used to be a lake you can tell because it looks like a lake<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}