Open Country South

Quick pavement cuts between pick-your-own berry farms

And big-sky cornfields

Signs warn of dangerous powerlines overhead

And that you’re laying tread on the United Spanish War Veterans Memorial Highway

Called Ohio’s Fresh Foods Corridor by marketers

Or the Scioto Trail

The city’s oldest family farms feel the squeeze of corporate growers

Handpainted signs for runner beans or strawberries stand still for now

The Columbus boundary is marked with the LED lights of the horsetrack casino

Where Audrey Hepburn’s impish grin adorns a cooing slot machine

And every wheelchair-marked parking space is perpetually filled

 

Next: Southside >>>

 

Poem ©Tracy Zollinger Turner, 2014.
These pieces were originally used as a narrative for the photography
exhibit 25 on High in Columbus, Ohio’s Urban Art Space.