An Ode to Black Point

Don't get me wrong. I am as sad as the next guy that the Northern Renaissance Faire couldn't stay at Black Point, and visiting the site is an odd, bittersweet experience. But I was comforted by the fact that the valley, despite the homes on the ridge overlooking what is now a golf course, is still so damn pretty. I took a photo, posted earlier, from near where the Main Gate stood. And I found myself thinking back to what the same view looked like during the Faire days. My friend Kathleen had posted comparing that site to Eden... her personal Arcadia. I, with satirist hat firmly in place and way too much Shakesperean verse currently in my head, scribbled this:

Recall Arcadian verdure in its spring,

Where Porta-potties once, like diadem

Of stringéd pearls, bejewelled majestic hills;

Where, like unto the camp of Agamemnon

Before the very walls of ancient Troy,

Crew trailers did, in Bondoed rusty hues

Assail the burlapped Will Wood-mounted gate,

Whilst from the ridge, stained nylon three-man tents

Spewed forth the reek and rowd of stonéd teens,

(Divers, who knew, below age of consent)

And morning dawned with lusty workman's voice,

Alarum-like, "Get the fuck outta the road!!"

Here now, in what was once a dusty vale

Engend'ring mucous blacker than the Moor,

Republicans drive and wedge, chip and par, 

Boogers for bogeys are exchanged; yet still

Do birdies come anon to bless the day

And eagles, on rarer wings, do soar.

   We curse our Faire-ways missed, our hooks and slices;

   Arcadia's yet green, by whate'er devices.