The Donovan

 
A historic pavement flows through part of a town,

where England’s Queen in a DeSoto once rode,

owned by the “Neighborhood King,” of renown.


Where the scent and glory of that “fresh Hunky air”

thrives in a Carpathian-Croatian wilderness –

a boulder-metropolized thoroughfare.


Tar paper skyscrapers house a warm felicity,

gripped by the verdure of manicured lawns,

fenced in a neoclassical artistry.


The pool room and bars are a stable sickness;

the local gang gone with its ferocity –

nostalgia is manic, adoring time’s thickness.


Red Fascist posters erupt on lamp posts,

haunting those, now reliving the terror.

until black brushstrokes murder the ghosts.


George’s store gone now, where it’d begun,

with the rest of my family, now self-exiled,

but here will remain, forever, the Donovan.