Detritus: Mal’Poetica

The poetry and song lyric column of the C-of-C-C Newsletter

🎶I’m from New Jersey

It’s not like Texas

There is still mystery

But all good things end.

I’m from New Jersey

Now like Ohio—only more so🎶

—to paraphrase John Gorka

BEHOLD THE LEAST BITTERN

He is a rare sight in these parts. We had the pleasure of his company as he quite literally posed for us for twenty minutes—from just that many feet away. None of our movements spooked him.

We have returned to our Hundred Acre Wood for eight days and counting now, and each day we’ve seen—and photographed—a new bird species. This little corner of remaining freshwater wetland sometimes feels exotic, with its lushness and abundance of migrant and native bird life. It suggests to us what the Amazon must be like.

By some type of irony—one which abounds in Jersey—it was once slated to be filled in to build an Amazon warehouse! It was preserved thanks to a Hungarian—a people who are also doing their best in Europe to preserve their own little corner of it.

The ad campaign for Pennsylvania tourism many years ago greeted those crossing the border with the slogan:

AMERICA BEGINS IN PENNSYLVANIA

This was during the Bicentennial era, and the reference was to the founding of the nation in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention. But we knew what it also meant.

It is now our turn to emigrate to America—again.

And now here is Black Cloud, who remembers his first day at school after moving from The City. It was overcast, and the air was heavy with the smell of the chemical factories that abounded in his new industrial town. It reeked of a dry-cleaning store—if you remember what those were like before they went organic. His teacher, Mr. Earle, was talking about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring. (I suppose the stench brought up the topic.)

Coming from the city, where there were only a few street trees surrounded by 4×4-foot patches of earth, Black Cloud really had no idea what nature was—other than what Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom showed him on Sunday nights.

Can you blame him if he still finds something numinous in nature?

It remains a refuge—just like the interior of the Gothic cathedral of his Catholic church growing up in the city.

—Frank Cacciatore, Dongan Hills Sportsmen’s Club

(Outdoors, Out Of This World, and Wildlife Correspondent for the C-of-C-C Newsletter)

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https://youtu.be/13cegtiYwDU?si=U-UVzvt87Zw9lEvk

DEEP IN THE HEART OF JERSEY

by Uncle Floyd / Black Cloud, with additional verses by Mrs ChatGPT, Fellow Traveller and Assistant Archivist of the Council

🎶Oh the faculty’s woke

only Princeton is not broke

deep in the heart of Jersey

the city rats

still attack in packs

deep in the heart of Jersey

the QuickChek man

says, “I no understand”

deep in the heart of Jersey

as the Trenton man

replaced you—that’s their plan

they stole the heart of Jersey

but the wetland skies

are a-flit with flies

deep in the heart of Jersey

for the migrant birds

we really have no words

deep in the heart of Jersey

oh, the Hundred Acre Wood

is the best we could

deep in the heart of Jersey

it’s my state

and I think it’s great!

but I’m leaving it post-haste

transplant my heart from Jersey🎶

[Expanded verses:]

by ChatGPT, C-of-C-C Assistant Archivist

🎶Grandma’s sauce still boils

on disputed soils

deep in the heart of Jersey

her basement shrine

outlasted time

deep in the heart of Jersey

they paved our street

but skipped our feet

deep in the heart of Jersey

our unions died

while they gentrified

deep in the heart of Jersey

dad’s Buick rusts

beneath pigeon dust

deep in the heart of Jersey

the mall was king

now it’s a ghost wing

deep in the heart of Jersey

the diner light

burns late at night

deep in the heart of Jersey

my roots run deep

but I can’t sleep

deep in the heart of Jersey