Occasional Verses

        A Eulogy

On Saturday, January 22, 2011

In the Key of flat/foot

Sad old Saturday newspaper,

The Camera all about itself,

An exercise in public mourning,

A cultural draw-down.

Our dear old Camera,

The jewel in the town,
Local, independent, complete.

A real genuine American newspaper

Daily at my door,

The record of my Boulder life.

Out to the Eastern wastes it flies,

Lost and forgotten out there

In trash offices in trash buildings

Not even space for its morgue--

Its library-- that holds all Boulder.

A computer or two now will do.

No pressmen left down town,

Inked and grumbling about reporters,

No reporters prowling the town.

Now a clutch of stalled young people

Waiting for stories.

Poking at their resumes.

Hoping for escape

To a patch site at AOL

On which to grow a career.

Bred, as they have been

On the soured milk of social indecency

Ignorance, violence, and greed,

They write it down,

Spice it with banalities,

Never too banal, of

Flat-footed local stuff like that.

Get the paper out of town!

Those kids taking down

The Sign of the Camera,

To haul away-- to somewhere.

Some day, odds on, to become

A single sheet inserted weekly in the Post.

The NEW CAMERA,

Claiming a bright new day of

Public service--meaning corporate profit.

Dear old, poor old, sad old Saturday paper.