American Dream, by ​John Scarborough

Four Lane Road, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1956

 
​American Dream
 
Outside a gas station in the Mid-West,
a middle-aged man sits in a chair.
Behind him, a woman calls from the window;
he can’t hear, perhaps he doesn’t care.
 
We have an oblique view of the building,
two gasoline pumps, red and yellow,
horizontals of road, grass, trees and sky.
That’s all, apart from sunlight and shadow.
 
The poet is lured to enter the scene;
she wants to interrogate Edward Hopper:
"If this man had a dream, surely it is lost
in his arrest and silence, in the rigid geometry
 
of corners, angles and shadows, the torpor
of brick and bone, where absence grows?"

​John Scarborough

John Scarborough lives in Lincolnshire in the UK. He is a poet and a member of Louth Poetry Group. John's love of art was inspired by his late wife, a fine artist and teacher. John's poems have been published in various literary journals including Reach Poetry, Dawntreader, Spelt, Orbis and Acumen. 
John was trained in social work and worked with ex-offenders, including the homeless and rootless. His interest in Hopper is linked to the sense of isolation and alienation present in many of his paintings.