Monday, January 14, 2019

FRAGILITY OF MAN

Quadrille Monday at dVerse
Whimsygizmo has chosen “change”for the featured word.
My daughter and granddaughter recently took a photographic
tour of Gary, Indiana.  Change dealt a cruel hand to Gary.
As its steels mills closed, its workers fled.  It’s once opulent
downtown (City Methodist Church pictured here) is a ghost
town with once gleaming buildings abandoned and in shambles.
It conjures an overwhelming feeling of sadness, and the
realization of the fragility of man and his efforts.
Submitted to dVerse
January 14, 2019
******************

Inexorable in its progress
Change came to the City of the Century
Steel mills stand silent and abandoned
Once proud buildings fallen to ruin
Photographers flock to capture
Tattered sentinels of fragility of man
Now become a modern Angkor Wat
Seeking illusion of hope
     

21 comments:

  1. Yes, change isn't always positive. Hard to imagine your photo of the church is just some kind of abandoned shambles in the middle of an American city.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Seeking illusion of hope" jumps out at me. "in the name of progress" has been a harbinger of doom for a long time...

    ReplyDelete
  3. From De:
    Bev, I can’t comment on your poem, which I loved. I have trouble with ‘blogspots’ these days. If anybody can help out, could you cut and paste my comment below when you visit Beverly Crawford’s poem, in addition to your own comment? Much obliged.

    Such a haunting, beautiful photo and poem. And yes, so so sad. Change is not always positive for all, that’s for sure. – De

    ReplyDelete
  4. Detroit joins the sadness, as do other once great cities; even the suburbs show us closed down family stores, crushed by the malls, strip or massive.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's a wonderful photo The physical world is always in flux, not always welcome. Some would have us believe that pretty soon the cyber world will replace the physical world... I am not buying that.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gorgeous - you captured the sadness of the decline and then placed it in historical context by bringing in Angkor Wat. Chilling how much the church resembles those banyan covered temples. Love 'tattered setinels"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Giving this a try on Firefox, Bev.
    Love the photo, and your words. Hauntingly beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ha! Success! THANK YOU for the suggestion!

    ReplyDelete
  9. How sad that those places have fallen to decay and have been abandoned.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You capture the tragedy of the decline so eloquently here.

    ReplyDelete
  11. So many abandoned buildings - old dream now rubble. Disheartening.

    ReplyDelete
  12. ...I know of what you speak. My husbands parents grew up around there (Whiting) - the steel industry certainly was dealt a fatal blow and that area has never recovered. It's now a very violent and depressed area as you know. The photo is sadly amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Unfortunately, there are too many abandoned places. Once a place of vitality now a place of lost dreams.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I like the Angkor Wat reference and the elegiac feel of the poem, 44 well chosen words.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I like the comparison with Angkor Wat.

    ReplyDelete
  16. There is so much despair in the ‘Once proud buildings fallen to ruin’ and ‘tattered sentinels of fragility of man’.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Nothing in this world lasts forever, seems everything naturally declines...a sad truth and evocative quadrille Bev.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Detroit.

    Interesting take on the prompt. Very cool.

    ReplyDelete
  19. the mill owners took all the value from the ground, and left the surrounding areas destitute when the markets changed. a sad commentary on the husks of American industry ~

    ReplyDelete
  20. I see this happening everywhere... and somehow these changes are inevitable... if there are options for a city to change it can still stay alive.

    ReplyDelete