Built during the Depression by an unemployed–and later terminally ill–outsider artist. These kinds of roadside grottoes–so personal and yet also religious and patriotic–seem to draw from a wellspring of imagery. Why Noah’s ark? Why stone? Why the obsession? I’ll always care, and go out of my way to see these pieces.
Finally On Our Own
river roll
under James Wright
bridges
freight train
crossing
in a dead language
I couldn’t begin
to claim kinship
confluence
of this
and something else
remnant
column
of a deteriorated
neo-classicism
an invisible
watershed, or wellspring
mid-western manners
what you wanted
was simply an insert
in an industrial scape
praise or curse
so far from the deserts
of my
awakening
wind, lead
coverlet, shroud
not everyone
lying down
was dead
some were
in the bathtub
some were dreaming
on the dotted line
a nameless bird
flew
from here to there
unaware
of the horizon.
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 