Poem of the Week by David Lampe in The Buffalo News

A dead floating muskrat:

what a metaphor for

the fifteen tortured miles

of that “channelized ditch”

we call Scajaquada Creek.

Since April 1990, we had

struggled to “clean up” the

last stretch of that stream

after it emerges from

three miles of under-

ground confinement – the

ultimate degradation for

free flowing waters.

What should have been

a source of pride and pleasure

has instead become the

cemetery for shopping carts,

capitalist debris,

urban travois for the home-

less and street people –

our wretched of the earth.

What should bring us together,

should be our center and focus

has been marginalized,

imprisoned and violated

so that only leeches

can live in its gleaming waters.

DAVID LAMPE, chair of the Burchfield Penney's Writers and Poets series, will join poet Karen Lee Lewis as the featured guests at this month’s Readings at the RIC Series event at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Room 101 of the Resource and Information Commons at Daemen College, 4380 Main St., Amherst. He is professor emeritus of English at SUNY Buffalo State, where he taught for 37 years, and author of the poetry collections “The Trees Walked” (2006) and “Quivers of Anonymous of Elmwood” (2009).

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