Standpipe: Delivering Water In Flint

This neighborhood seems pastoral, almost idyllic on a warm sunny late spring day.  Large swaths of verdant, vacant land exist in place of demolished houses.  A riot of weeds, tangle of vines, saplings and thorn bushes swallow old fence, busted apron, old sycamore and blackened foundation, all of it overlaid with littered street grid.  Arm out the window, the world here is sun dappled and sweet smelling.   I imagine thriving populations of small game, larger predators and birds.  Same place one week later, overcast, heat oppressive.  I’m stricken by an undeniable sense of foreboding, primitive reptilian brain response of the hunted.  The undergrowth harbors unseen danger.  Abandoned houses are nothing less than great blackened lungs gasping for breath, cellars filling, standing water black, gleaming with oil sheen.