Leaving Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Coated with coal dust
I stretched across mountains
and valleys, searching your eroding
landscapes for crevices
where only open fields remain.
When I left your boundaries,
I sought newer histories,
turning from the outlined past
you created and the ruined lives
you sifted over streets
and houses and porches, continual
rot on a stagnant wind.

Until one morning decades
later I find myself
tracing the edges
of Goldenrod among coal
slag, Sweet
Woodruff shrouding
splintered panes.

-Jessica Myers-Schecter  ¶ 8:54 AM