Lake Parramatta SEC
GHOST CITY
Victoria Cartwright
Metal shopping carts
lie abandoned and lonely.
Their stone wheels no
longer circling but resting
dried and stiff.
A wind whistles along
the few leaves and branchlets
on the battered path where
hillocks of dirt lie.
The same walk back and
forth from home to shop
to home again. The same
troubled talk about what
could happen next and passing
the occasional person now
aware of others passing
but giving them more
distance in the new normal.
Fingers jump about a keyboard
to recall the little that happens
in this ghost city.
Victoria Cartwright is an American wordsmith living in Australia with a cladder of cats and a poet for a husband.