Indiana Verses
pt. 1-5
written by: Rando Mithlo
Ghost of Pulaski
Get some fast food or farm produce
Head down the alley in search of you
Attitude straight from rock album art
I see you drive in your parent’s car
Met on a day like this one spring
When Island Park had been flooding
Churning up signs of mills long past
Early autos and tarnished band brass
Took a long breath I wanted to keep
Your look swayed me to drop everything
The two rivers dividing each part
Ghost of Pulaski known as Elkhart
Was I too rude when you were for real
Time’s of the essence from you I steal
Necessity of a family
Often rushed we’d been raised this way
A fate like the opera and armory
Blankly I watch this wrecking ball swing
There at the bridge we swim underneath
Concrete and rebar hides in the deep
Parke County Shade
The shallow creek coruscate
Turkey run and heron wait
At tourist stand rental paid
Paddle deft and spirits wake
Skink scurry into late day
Buoyant all along the way
All I see
In grain and green
Rough covered bridge
To cross one lane
Bankrupt motel a remnant
Parties drift in fair event
In the gauzy beams are stairs
Up to task to climb up there
In dense wood streams trickle past
Cliffs to falls to the Wabash
All I see
A far chimney
The glacial till
Cut scenery
For Monticello
Factory stops, serving a smile
I couldn’t believe my luck
Any bad assumed reversed
Because now you’re in my truck
Something about eyes
So dark inside
Like the Monon bounds
On its last night
Ages crossing hurling down
Awkward or odd I know it seems
Broken homes and broken into
Missing fire among other things
I believed all
Your woes not gone
Is this carnal gold
Stole from your vault?
For Monticello
I have to thank
Amusement rides
An excuse to drink
A call as I stand in the snow
Shivering your apathy chills
Here where the curtains would fall
No answer was an answer still
The comet gone by
A waning blue moon
Conceding to fate
And sleeping ‘til noon
Geneva wanders the Limberlost
Brightly passed
Those days so calm
In a cabin overlooking a swamp
Disappear some more every year
Captured there in momentous air
Birds and moths set fantasy
Penning just a perfect ending
A sylvan love
Arbor of grapes
Rural motifs jump off a page
Into the trees deeply engrained
Keenly observed
A mentality
A daughter’s bold ability
Why some shrug the colorful text
Feeling the wild to describe it best
Indiana
The Limberlost
Reversing time for when it’s gone
The Gary Sheridan
Of all worth reality takes
Bright prospects and lay to waste
Cluttered view in depth of field
In silence subjects revealed
All can see of your landscape
Fine charade you try to maintain
Eyesore rise from the interstate
Windows blown wave lemon drape
What’s done is done
Whatever they do
Nothing no nothing more
Renaissance a mantra embraced
Point fingers in circular ways
Bearing no fruit the bars will remain
From drunken cans applying paint
Reeling for years plans never last
No empathy for another’s past
Nail another board to the door
But it won’t stop this flooding more.
- Relaxed Standards - February 15, 2024
- The Darkest Road - September 30, 2023
- Leaving To Guess - June 26, 2023
