Legacy Lost

[Erthona]

DM,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. As far as my intent, you are probably projecting far more onto this poem than I intended. My poetry is often archetypal and so I will often allude to any number of things from past literature as a way to create an image of a particular archetype. There is certainly innocence and loss of innocence in the poem, but for me these are archetypes of human experience and the story of the "Garden of Eden" is simply one literary manifestation of that. St Augustine is simply St Augustine grass which is why I footnoted it. There was no conscious intention to invoke the person of St Augustine. St Augustine grass was very representative of dreams in Southern and Southwestern America during the 50' through the 70's, as it was a dream of many men to be able to cultivate a yard of this grass, for it was as beautiful and it was difficult to grow. It thrived in shade with lots of water, whereas we had a lot of sun and little water.
"whitewashed" was used as a double entendre to demonstrate a twist, that this idyllic setting was only at the expense of ignoring the racial inequalities of the time. So it leans primarily on the verb form:

to cover up or gloss over the faults or errors of; absolve from blame.

which is of course the only way apple pie innocence could exists, thus leading to the second usage

to whiten with whitewash.

In other words a white society, primarily due to segregation. So while it can be read as a pun, as in to express humor, that was not the intent.
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In terms of the form I wish you would have been a little more specific in terms of what you think makes it seem "flat and prosaic".

"The punctuation in the first few lines is unnecessary and distracting"

You could be correct, there are many who disdain it altogether as a stylistic choice. That is not me however, and I do not write poetry as a tabula rasa for reader response. I endeavor to be as clear as possible and I feel that punctuation is a primary tool in accomplishing that. The punctuation is there to let the reader know how it is to be read. The em dashes simply create a parenthetical statement and the ellipses indicate a reflective pause: that the speaker is re-thinking, then qualifying his original statement, and this indicates that this is somehow important. On the surface I would agree with you that it reads somewhat prosaic, however the subtext is not I think, however I will concede that this is not of any great intellectual depth. It is simply a musing about the cost of things, and how two disparate realities can exist in the same place at the same time, with both being maybe as real as the other.

Thanks again for your comments. I will continue to consider them.

Dale

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Billy,

"not sure whitewashed away works in conjunction with grass, though it does depict a loss of memories rather well"

Now that you bring it up, the connection may be related in only my experience. I was thinking about seeing someone pouring a bucket of watered down white paint onto the grass as they were rinsing out their painting equipment (I worked as a house painter for awhile). It also ties in to where I grew up everything got sort of a washed out appearance because of the constant wind and dust, as though a light coating of chalk dust was layered over everything. However in my defense, whitewashed is "muted" as contrasted to the "sharp" of the grass as well as it's color. Regardless, for good or ill, I think I am stuck with it, as I know of nothing to replace it with that would fulfill its task.

Thanks for giving it a read, you seemed to have squeezed most of the juice out of it

Dale