image from medjugorje.org.br
Espiritu Santo
“Without the spirit of God, we are nothing--
ships without wind--useless.”
--C.H. Spurgeon.
I was
raised in Seattle--
then
was gone
for a decade;
returning
I found only
sadness.
No one
had a ghost
of a chance
to buy
over-priced
property--
and I found
myself
chasing ghosts--
because
friends & family
had died or
moved away.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub Q26
Difficult when your old hometown has moved on and changed while you were gone...
ReplyDeleteGentrification is the posh little sister to genocide I think... sad when neighborhoods dies and all you can get to compensate is a soy-milk latte.
ReplyDeleteThis is heart-breaking :( I for one knows how it feels when loved ones move away and when home seems changed..
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad, Glenn. I can identify with it because I had to return to my home town for my mother's funeral. It has changed so much - not through gentrification but because the people who live there don't care about the place - and there is no one left I know.
ReplyDeleteOh....this is so hard to read. My son and his family lived in Seattle for quite a few years....had to rent for two or three years before they could afford a downpayment on a modest house -- this after selling a house in Baltimore. They ultimately moved to North Carolina and, yep, you guessed it. Sold their Seattle home and that money bought triple the house in NC. Seattle housing market is out of sight. But -- when you can see Mt Rainer, all is right with the world!
ReplyDeleteI do understand returning to a place where family has all left. It feels like when you walk round the corner you should see your friends...as they looked when you were there. Or when you go by Aunt Betty's old house, she should be opening the door looking like she did when she was your Aunt Betty, so many years ago.
Sounds like most big cities the world over. They are full of the kind of people who could live anywhere at all. The spirit of place has flown.
ReplyDeleteThis is so relevant. We too have returned to our hometown after many years away...and we look for recognition in the faces only to find hollow stares with little recognition... we have all grown older, perhaps we are looking at the wrong faces?
ReplyDeleteI have heard that property is expensive there. Higher taxes could also encourage people to leave.
ReplyDeleteProperty values have just gone up and people have moved away ~ It's just sadness all around Glenn ~
ReplyDeleteThought provoking and well written.
ReplyDeleteMy mother and I travelled to our hometown about 10 years ago. Only Duke U hadn't changed. One of the hiuses used in Bull Durham (on the street where our family had lived since 1890) had been torn down. The street remains the same but the rest of the town...bah.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad to see the world changing around us.
ReplyDeleteIt was such a tragedy to try to trace them when they had moved away. Worse when they had to go not of their own free will. The same the world over. Property got beyond reach of the younger set!
ReplyDeleteHank
There's always a second chance
ReplyDeleteChange is inevitable...just wish it wasn't for the worse. Maybe our real home is in the Holy Spirit, after all.
ReplyDeleteIt is sadly part of the cycle which comes from viewing economic growth as the highest value. Capitalism will be the death of many a community yet before it is done.
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad, and did not at all go the direction I expected from your title and quote. It is in such situations that one must find new friends or move back to somewhere not dominated by gray skies and rain.
ReplyDeleteAwwww. This is sad. Change sucks.
ReplyDelete