Yuba Site 5 & 7 (Benicia Armory)

Frances Jackson is a Benicia poet with a kind, yet sharp and honest eye. In the following poem, she comments on a painting by Linda Grebmeier;s paintings of the ruins of manufacturing buildings in the Armory and exhibited at Gallery 621 in Benicia.

Yuba Site 5 # 7

I hazard the spectre
of faces in the window
step around
the gleaming cross laid down
on pooled, red ground.

only afraid
of who women fear
in abandoned spaces
discarded places
where no one hears 
you weep.

light plunges through
the broken roof
like crash of lightning
rays of morning
potential energy
in empty dawning.

abandoned now
the cavernous rooms
where busy workers milled
beneath the shattered palisade
that rusty beams still span.

along steel ruins
resound the groans
which seem to speak with scorn
flesh can't be forged
nor spirit formed
to mend my broken bones.

                 Frances Jackson 11/2012