A Life America Once Lived

by Jason E. Hodges

The midday train calls in the distance
Echoing through this once bustling town
The perfect manicured laws of the suburbs have now fallen
Fallen back to the hands of the wild
Weeds now grow high around household furniture
Furniture left behind when there’s nowhere left to go
Hawks sit patently on the edge of a rain filled swimming pool
For the green water is coming to life
Life that calls out in the darkness
When the night comes and stars speckle the sky
Calls thrown from awakened green frogs singing their songs from the warm green water
In the pool that once entertained formal dinner parties
Behind the house that needed no down payment
The house that needed no credit
With a mortgage that made a salesman a bonus
A mortgage that was anything but right
And now the train calls out in the distance
Falling away, almost unable to hear
Like the cries from dreams lost in the city
Dreams barley held on by the desperately holding
Dreams very few would continue to see
But the banks keep on building
One seems to be on every corner and street
T-shirts and coffee mugs are out for the handing
Handed out to ones that open an account
But the ones that fly the flags of out tuned pockets
Should not even apply
For the days of getting the Unaffordable American Dream
Are gone like the people that once filled these homes