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Vacation highlights because
How does a camera capture low humidity
A breathable phenomenon
For those who wade through weather
In, for example, the state of Florida?
How to take a picture of utter silence
Broken only by a dog’s bark
Or the crack of a rifle
(My fear I stifle)
Unaware family of deer moving across
The forest floor pocked with
The pecking of wild turkeys
We cautiously find our lost path
Forest giving way to civilization
Dogwoods shelter my dogs from the woods
As we tramp across a wooden bridge
Twenty feet–no handrails–above a frantic creek
Of rushing water like a loud bully
As it pushes over a collection of rocks
Here near Mineral Bluff (Georgia) Depot
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
But all we find are the remnants of
Rotting railroad trestles
Recycled as natural planters
Raging creek rapids a daily garden hose
At last, the cabin with an indoor
Scent like a forest of fresh wood
Though wet dog odor proves
Nature’s aroma is no match
This power spot is also situated in
Cherokee County, North Carolina
We drive through the American blandness of Murphy
With its identical fast food restaurants and stores
Only to find out that it was once the sorrowful
Start of the Trail of Tears
The site of the Cherokee Removal
When the tribes were forced to move
West of the Mississippi River
I shed tears for them and other forced marches
Even in my own ethnic nightmare of the Second World War
The breakaway state of Transnistria
A place where the Roma and Sinti
(Members of my family)
And Ukrainian and Roumanian Jews
Were deported to their death like the Native Americans
And so many countless groups on our beautiful Earth
But we are a luckier generation
We get into the car and drive to
Copper Hill, Tennessee to see a mine full of arsenic
Eating away at a town of unfriendly people
We thought we would move there, the reason for our trip
But no, too much heartbreak and suffering permeate the air
We stop to see the TVA dam that powers all but my WIFI and cell phone
Two useless-in-the-mountains pieces of technology
Teasing me, not allowing me to communicate
How spoiled I am! Not forced marched out of my homeland
Just forced to be without social media for a few days…
None of it matters, of course, because
The power of four seasons (instead of two)
In a three-state section of the Blue Ridge Mountains
Tempts me by awakening the desire to leave
The impossible temperatures of Florida
To begin a new life
Will I?
© 2015 ViataMaja
poeturja 