Upon Noticing Vanishing Openness

I cannot see the farms’

furrowed fields and barns

or smell the cows and chickens,

but I know that that land lay

fallow under the new store

courtyards and condominiums

and big, big houses.



I’ve learned to deepen

my feeling beyond just what

I see; especially, when I come

home to Bucks County.



No more is the land just open;

a standing place from which

to be. It has been moved about

a bit to be the place needed now.



But still, I feel a need to ask,

“Isn’t wide-openness a value

we should espouse and tend

toward in both social planning

and interiority? Is it not a soothing

place to sustain us? Are not

spaces of BIG BEAUTY

needed by us all?”



And, “Is it globally

economical (space-wise) and ethical

for few a people to hoard large

spaces and relegate the many to

smaller spaces?”



Just asking.



We don’t have to be Communist

to ask: “On a singular planet of

known size, and with a growing

number of space-consumers is there

not a measurable sense of “ENOUGH”?



A sense of how much one may hold

so we may also hold wide-open

space in common?”



And, by the way,



“When did we vote on making

corporations more important than

individuals, families, and communities?

Because I didn’t get my chance to vote.”



I cannot see the farms’

furrowed fields and barns

or smell the cows and chickens,

but I know that that land lay

fallow under the new store

courtyards and condominiums

"Corn" 

by Bucks County Impressionist, Daniel Garber