A poem from the Red Dirt Plaines.

Okie Poetry

This sure am not Hollywood

Nineteen forty-one was the year Carl, Sr. and his bashful bride
Left the parched and dry farm.
They arrived in the coast to the west
with two Toddlers in tow.
Carl, Jr. and Peggy Sue.
The four of them fresh off
The Route some called 66.
One man’s family migrating from the
Sandy red dirt’s of southern Oklahoma.
It was a new Spring and the L A sky
Was smoky gray.
They knew not even one soul
In this over inhabited place.
Carl and his bride with young family seemed weary and worn.
It was a difficult trek from their
Motherland.
There were no familiar arboreals and fauna.
Not one Native tree like scrub oaks and dry parched and hard red clay soils
Like they left back home
No creeks nor snakes they even noticed.
But what was seen
Was Blue-gray Mountains spread in the eastern horizon.
Busy boulevards filled with rivers of
Shiny sedans and semi-trucks.
appearing as Flowing Rivers of molasses.
Slow and halting
Honking and hesitating like
Caravans of angry flop eared farm mules.
“Well heck, is this what California
Is all about?
We left Southern red dirt
Oklahoma for this?”
Smelly, smokey, and semi-arid sands
Of industrial noisiness? This is our reward?
Boy howdy!
If this don’t beat all I ever saw.
We must have landed on the
Wrong end of the tracks.

Charles, the Okie Poet.
Oct. 2022