Threshold, M.O. Publishing Company (2)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Apocrypha

A quaint pastime this, visiting
reconstructions of
old pioneer villages,
revelling in the leisurely pace
convinced that time passed with grace
in that mellow yesterday.

But those who preceded us had
scant time to reflect on their past,
less yet to reflect on a future
where an idle class would while
away free hours in idyllic memory.

Truth is, young women's gravestones
whose hieroglyphs make no mention
of childbirth fever
and those of pale-cheeked
consumptive children. Truth is
the village doctor rolling pills

of false hope. And truth is
hands lopped alongside logs in
lumber mills - and rhythmic racket
of looms driving websters to insanity;
farmers struggling to free the land

for stubbornly unproductive soil;
and fisherfolk lost to a raging sea.
All these and more mark the
realities of their day yet we
unknowing, envy that unenviable

existence when a slower pace
was taken at the cost of tasks
at hand. Our visit here is a
nostalgia whose image we treasure.
That life exists, here, in our heads.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Threshold