MAINTENANCE-FREE LIVING

Near the few remaining woods
are modern pictographs,
                                          warning
passing vehicles of the presence of deer,
not for the protection of the deer
but for the protection of the vehicles
                                                            And
a few of the signs are boastful,
a strange sort of civic boosterism:
our deer here
                    were not slothful,
                                                    but
               ACTIVE

* * * * * * *

Another sign heralds soon-to-come luxury homes,
development bearing a natt nature name
to distract from the destruction it wreaked,
                                                                    promising

MAINTENANCE-FREE LIVING
(all costs shifted squarely onto the shoulders
of those further downstream)


Michael Ceraolo is a fortysomething civil servant/poet trying to overcome a middle-class upbringing. “Willoughby” is an excerpt from his long poem Euclid Creek: A Journey (Deep Cleveland Press).