by Carolyn Foote Edelmann
Inspired by Rory Mahon Fuji Crystal Print: Summer – Cornfield at Sunset, at D&R Greenway’s “The Road Not Taken” exhibition.
lie back on this soil
or what used to be soil
what nobody wants to realize
is sand/gravel/dust
—drought’s detritus
stare up from this soil
through the green shafts
of corn, or what used to be
green, before
the wages of emissions
turned all stalks to shocks
—first crisped to bisque
—then cinnamon brown
—dessicated to charcoal, even cinder
cornleaves used to be silken
rising like green fountains
from soil that was lush
in the former Garden State
—dessicated state
most guarded state
“Report Suspicious Behavior”
glares from bright white banner
above our US 1
I keep verdant memories
of festoons of corn
opening blue windows
to sky / to light
in that time before warming
became curse
Arts and Education Associate at D&R Greenway Land Trust, Carolyn spends her days doing whatever it takes to call attention to the urgency of saving land in our New Jersey. She maintains two nature blogs, NJ WILD for the Packet and “The Nature of Princeton” for Princeton Patch. In the 1970s she was accepted by Princeton University to study with Ted Weiss, Galway Kinnell and Stanley Plumly. She has been published since the 1970s in many literary journals, with two chapbooks to her name.
