Ghost Eden
Erika Meitner
after Anthony Haughey’s “Settlement”
Garden of rock.
Garden of brick and heather.
Garden of cranes with their hands raised
as if they know the yellow answer:
to gather together – safety in numbers.
Garden of drywall frames, holes for windows
punched out like teeth. Garden of bar fights.
Garden of rubble and gaps,
spectral for-sale signs knocked
from wooden posts, bleached down
to numbers ending in gardens of overgrown lots.
We are falling into ruin, garden
of scaffolding and shale and gravel –
give us back our peace: a half-built garden
of theft, treasures hidden in darkness,
newspapers crumpled on subfloors telling us
to hold fast to that which is good.
Garden of rebar and saplings with trunks
encased in corrugated piping
because many animals can girdle
a tree’s bark quickly: deer, stray cats, rabbits.
Garden of Tyvek wrap loosed
and flapping like a ship’s sail
in the gales, in the sheeting storms.
Hanging laundry left out in the garden
past darkness, fruit from the tree
of human-ness: socks, shirts, underpants.
Garden of long exposures, half-light, traces
that empty themselves in tire treads running
like ladders through red clay mud:
the dirt from which we are formed
and crushed and formed again.
About this poem
“I was on a Fulbright in Northern Ireland last spring and doing research at Belfast Exposed, a contemporary photography gallery that also has an archive of community photos that include the period of the Troubles. On my way out one day, I picked up a card from an old exhibit of Anthony Haughey’s work, which led me to his website, and his images of Irish Ghost Estates – housing developments abandoned mid-build due to the economic crash – called ‘Settlement.’ I used his images to write this poem.” – Erika Meitner
About Erika Meitnerl
Erika Meitner is the author of “Copia” (BOA Editions, 2014). She teaches at Virginia Tech and lives in Blacksburg, Va.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Erika Meitner. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
