Poetry and Art / Part 1- Confined In Small Spaces

beginningtoend (69)in #poetry • 8 years ago (edited)

When European settlers first arrived in America

people were already there, as many as 900,000 Native Americans, speaking over 300 different languages. They helped the settlers survive their first brutal years. Then, as the settlers prospered they became inconvenient, were bullied from their lands and forced to make meaningless treaties that redefined borders. Their treatment, like slavery, is an ugly American scar: especially when you consider, Native Americans only possess about 2 percent of American land.

Three Stone Witnesses the Inevitable Arrival of Grey River Horses

Grey hippos, brandishing teeth
and acting all territorial, move in
along Tecumseh Street.

Wary of their gratuitous mass
mothers gather their children.

A Mustang, spotted with rust
runs a red light.

Police give a warning,
set ambiguous lines, perimeters
that are forced to expand
as more and more
hippos arrive.

I stand hidden
in my second floor window,
watch sparrows brush flies
from their potamus backs.

NOTE: Metaphor is one of my favorite poetic devices. It is a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing. It is a comparison that may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas.

In this poem I create a surrealistic image, a metaphor that compares hippos to European settlers.

CLICK HERE for Part 2

Their Arrival Was Unexpected

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