Suburban

This was a field not long ago.
Patterned houses face a street
With quarter-acre lawns or so
And landscaped trees make it complete.

The mailman stops at every home.
You’ll need a car to get somewhere.
Like stars out there we shine alone
In tiny castles all our own
But love will find friends waiting there.

Linked to dVerse Poetics – suburb poetry hosted by Oloriel.

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

30 thoughts on “Suburban”

  1. I love that you take it back to gentleness, to warmth that is inviting. I think in my memory there is nothing prettier than when I would with my family be invited to a suburban party, right in someone’s back yard.

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    1. There are a lot of problems with suburbs. I hated mowing the lawn, the extra long commute to work on both car and train and the houses seemed to me to have poorer construction, but there are real people living there who are not make out of ticky-tacky and that softens any of those problems enough to make living there tolerable.

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  5. It is a shame, Frank. No more fields and meadows anywhere near where we live. We played in those fields till dark nearly every night. Good thought though, friends are better than empty fields.

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    1. I think it would have been better to have built high-rise condos rather than single family homes which take up more space. The idea of owning some land was perhaps more valuable in the past than it is today, but if one is only growing grass on that land it is not quite a farm. One could have friends in either place.

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  6. We have very few meadows or farmer’s fields left–tract house sprout up monthly. But, yes, there are, I’m sure, good people to be found despite the negative aspects; inner cities still have ghettos & higher crime.

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    1. There can be good people anywhere. I think town homes and condos are more practical than tract homes, but there is dependence on HOAs. We only lived in a suburb for a few years. Otherwise it has been near the center of small towns within walking distance of cafes and libraries.

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    1. I suspect the former attraction of the suburbs is fading. People move where they can find affordable housing accessible to work and a reasonably good school for their children. That might put them in a suburb without them actually wanting to live there. Thanks, Kim!

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  11. Late to the posting and to the reading too 😟 Oh yes… a car is a definite must in the burbs … I especially like the idea of all those tiny castles in a row…as in a home is your castle.

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    1. One of the reasons I was glad we left the suburb we lived in for a few years was the lawn and isolated house that required maintenance. It also required a car to get to anywhere of interest. Thanks, Lillian!

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  12. I would have said “you must have lived in a classier neighbourhood than me..”. The quarter acre and castle was what we aspired too. A lovely reminder of how important “homes” are to all of us…

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    1. They were further out from the city (Chicago), but less expensive than where we were living at the time. Ultimately, it was a mistake and we moved again back to a town setting in a few years. If one cannot do anything with the quarter acre, it is not enough land to hide from the neighbors and too much land to maintain. It did seem different from Terraceville that I remembered in your poem and the photographs. It was more like the tract housing developments that other people described.

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  13. I am torn between the privacy and the loneliness/isolation that I get from your description of the suburbs. Thus, I am quite relieved that there are friends who come by. 🙂

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    1. Thank you! The people in the suburbs are what make living there tolerable. But that would be the case with any environment. I prefer a small town environment and a home that is connected to others such as a town home or condo. No lawn or building to maintain. One can walk to something.

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