My Neighborhood

Ooops this is an older post in a new dress.... didn't realize the date would change.

(A poem, gasp! And about my very own neighborhood even! It might be dangerous reading)

Michelangelo of Golden Valley Parkway (poem)


Ethnography of Golden Valley Parkway?
no no it has to be a poem because
I cant really do all those interviews
what with the guarded stares
growling dogs
probable guns
toothy rabbits
attack roosters
clucking hens
crunchy egg shells besides
some don’t speak English
and some think I don’t speak English
on Golden Valley Parkway

Way back when
there was a forest
in the good ole US of A
at the foot of fast asleep
mighty volcano ski resort
a corner of forest turned into woods
into a country club o my
roads cut through trees
crisscrossed into small lots
for campers and others
little big vacational
vehicles and cute houses mostly Canadians
visitors of modest means
on GoldenValley Parkway

We are not talking
of a stately avenue
just one road curving on itself
cul-de-sacs left and right
country club no more
visitors gone
mobile homes looking like stick houses
stick houses looking like mobile homes
and shacks looking like themselves
side by side
smattering of medium and big houses
small mansions even
no trace of urban planning
no right wrong side of tracks
no tracks
haphazard arrivals
newly minted property owners
and some dirt poor renters
housing too dear in town
but not here
in the American dreamland
on Golden Valley Parkway.

Waves of people from town
and Alaska California
Ukraine Russia a scatter
of American flags support our loggers
landscaped flowers on side up front
cars trucks refrigerators washing machines
in rusted tormented chunks
trampolines basketball hoops
dogs and cats and chicken coops
old man walking with pet goat
meth lab sheriff down the block
cornered by six cop cars
even once homeland security
soldiers with guns at ready
on Golden Valley Parkway

Still tall pines green
belts and vacant lots
shrubbery and forts
gaggle of children playing huddling
under the crisscross of electric wires
and here yes here on a wire
on either side of dead appliances
a pair of sneakers dangling by shoelaces
bleached and washed bright by rain and sun
recording forever
the gesture the throw perfect
heart of creation
on Golden Valley Parkway


Way way back when
there was a marble mountain
and in its tortured stones
Michelangelo found a David
catapult on his shoulder
ready for the perfect throw
smashing an invisible giant’s grip
to smithereens
and here
I found the hidden Michelangelo
brightly dangling on a wire
his shoes forever flying
over tortured rust and flowers
pine trees and trampolines
children in their dreamings
on Golden Valley Parkway


Poem copyright 2008 by Catherine Tihanyi
(imagine, a copyrighted poem! Now who would steal such a thing!
I’m more concerned that somebody would locate Golden Valley Parkway and steal the magic shoes in the dead of night)