Violet Town (111 of 365)

Day 111 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day calumny meaning "a false accusation of an offence."

Violet Town

Through the reeds and 

Beyond ploughs

Through fields of shorn cane

Where wind tickles daisies, sunflowers and rhododendrons 

I met my first love in Violet Town

I recall the vivid colours 

Of the basket she carried

With strawberries to the quaint 

Market by the creek that was blue

In all the yellow and brown

Spring had become her 

The scent of pollen buzzed

In my heart and tall tractors

Wove perfumes of grass and grease and grasshoppers chirped

There was the yowl of a grouchy elder of the town she was miserly and sallow and short as a barrow

There was also a balding grocer by the name of Kent he had wares that he sold and lent 

There was a collective yawn 

On the wooden stoops of the town

There was a collective curiosity as cars drove down the cracked solitary road and drove on and away drawing exhaust over the flowering fields of violet gerberas and posies

It's wheels spinning on into the horizon

It is knotted in my memory and heart like frayed twine 

I recall days of pleasant nothing 

The name continues to emote something, which claws at my innards and causes me pause and regret

I still recall the tears on her solemn cheeks 

From the calumny I spat upon her and that town 

Whose character I could not comprehend

Even so...

Time's wheels are not kind to Violet town

Time's wheels have spun me on

Time's wheels have turned its back on this place 

The world's colours are neon 

The world's colours are ill-suited for flowers 

The world is ill suited for girls bearing strawberries and hand thatched baskets

I fear the world is not one for Violet Town

I fear only my nostalgia is at home in this place 

It invents and imposes itself upon the cracks and groaning sorrow

Of untold droughts and neglect

Of the forgotten craft of smallness and neatness and earnestness 

It is lost and hollow

The faces are new but are old

The land is haggard and dying

The wooden boards once lacquered and watered are now dry like the bones of a drying fly beaten carcass.