One of three poems published in Off the Coast, Maine's International Poetry Journal
Streetsweeper
In this haven I clean paths in parks, sweep streets.
Red stains splatter the ground
where berries fell after last night’s storm.
They are not the blood smears
of brothers accused of betrayal.
Hear-say alone is enough
to crush bones back home.
I joyfully sweep up berry seeds.
They are not broken fingers, or toes.
I wash the walkway, breathe in unpolluted air.
It is free of gasoline fumes spewed
by military trucks heading to frontier towns
to crush the voices of discontent.
My heart dances with joy
at the sight of red stains, not blood.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 11.10. 10
http://www.off-the-coast.com
Althea, sweet friend, fellow poet, you certainly put the reader in the place where the voice of the poem is or where you are. You do this as well as I have encountered it in any of the arts. How well you always compete with the visual artists. I'd been meaning to ask you only recently if you ever read Sherwood Anderson? I read his novel, Winesburg, Ohio. It is the same sort of cinematography you produce with words. Must tell you how delighted I was recently in response to your wishing you could write like me. From I heard your poetry in Medellin, I had been thinking: Oh if only I could write like Althea Romeo-Mark. It is so accurate - your language and what it evokes. It shall be that clear for hundreds of years - like a poem I know and love by Sappho - from that long ago. Your work has the same emotional and visual clarity as haiku by BashÅ. Your "Streetsweeper," Althea, also calls to mind, "The Hunchback In the Park" by Dylan Thomas.
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