Only Baltimore

Weary travelers look down not out
At smartphones
At iPads like this one
The train stops
No station, just stops
I look out past my daughter through the smeared window
Only Baltimore I think

But before me are lines of tiny connected houses
Some kept, some not
Radiating away from my window
Like the spokes of a wheel on a forgotten wagon
Too long in a field out behind a rundown barn
Passed by time some spokes broken and jagged
Some almost new
It's only Baltimore

There are plains here before me
Waving fields of grass in irregular rows
That dart to and fro along abandoned concrete sidewalks
Growing deeply and unmolested by steel
Where workers used to walk to jobs
In factories
But that was long ago
Here in Baltimore

Other buildings here too
In the distance ivy shows against red brick
A factory, it's insides awash with light
Visible through massive unbroken windows
The light pours in through a completely open sky
To the workers below
Here in Baltimore

The workers are green and sturdy
They stand in clumps and masses on the factory floor
Their leaves and branches reach towards the light
They grow uncaring as to where they are
Seeming not to notice their place of work
They will work anywhere
Even in Baltimore






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Quiet Car

The quiet car causes one to ask questions
Like, whose definition of quiet are we riding under?
There is noise

The steady roar of the air conditioning
The muffled rumble of steel wheels on steel rails
A sneeze
A cough
The blunt tap of finger on touch screen
A rustle from a paper or magazine

It allows one to sleep
Or to think
About the Japanese man across the isle
Or his Japanese wife
I think they're Japanese
And where they are taking his parents
Or her parents

Is it a day in the city?
If so, which one?
New York?
Philly?
DC?

They are both older than I
And as I sit in the quiet car I wonder
Can they still hear the noises I do?

Can you?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Amtrak

My Desk

My desk has spaghetti on it

It does, really

And leaves

and bricks

and two cannon which point at my face

when the spaghetti doesn’t twist them some other way

The spaghetti is sauceless

no butter or cheese either

it connects my laptop to the world

To the scanner, two printers, a hard drive, my cell phone, my iPod

Power

It lies there in a mass, woven together like marsh grass in a Gullah basket I saw in the museum on Hilton Head once

But not as pretty or expensive

The leaves are stacked nicely for leaves anyway

In piles near the edges of the desk

Poised like the ships teetering on the edge of the flat world

They tell me things

Who I need to pay, who I can put off until next month

that my daughter should consider Pratt even though she wants to be a journalist

They’ll be reshuffled and eventually filed or thrown away

Not like tree leaves

The ones that get raked up into piles

To be jumped in

The pointy pin oakey ones like the ones on a Gullah basket woven from marsh grass I saw once in a museum on Hilton Head

The bricks are smaller than real brinks

The kind towns slap all over their storefronts in the Northeast to make them look Colonial

Like Williamsburg

Virginia

Still, my bricks are smarter, not stronger mind you, just smarter
They are a cell phone, a hard drive and an iPod

They hold things more important to me than the colonial bricks could

People, places, things all stored in little tiny bits

Like rice in that Gullah basket woven from marsh grass that I saw in the museum on Hilton Head once

And don’t worry

The two cannon which sit, pointed at my head, don’t fire bullets

They're speakers which fire things far more important

Than bullets

They fire a barrage of words and music and ideas from people smarter than me

From people in places I’ve never been

Places I may never go

Places where they weave baskets out of marsh grass like the one I saw in that museum on Hilton Head once.

The Spot

As I sit on the covered terrace
Surrounded by 90 years of family
My eye is drawn, as great grandpa David had planned
To the spot where the mountains meet

Beyond that, the next mountain just sitting there
Tauntingly reflected in the pond at the bottom of the hill
As if knowing that for today
It is out of reach

As sun wakes and light comes to the hillside
Buzzards take flight, awakened by the promise of new currents
Representing the end of life
They are appropriate for today

The creek rumbles down the valley
Refreshed by evening rain
It too is drawn to the spot
At the bottom of the hill
Where the mountains meet
Where the next mountain watches
Under the black soaring wings
Where two people, separated by consequence
Return to each other's arms forever

Dangling Wanderer?

Sugar ant on bathroom floor

By the shower, near the door

You wander here, you wander there

Up and down most anywhere

You do not notice, above your head

An eight leg’d wolf hangs by a thread

And next to him suspended there

Are friends of yours dangling in mid-air

They do not move, wrapped so tight
Asleep forever, oh endless night

But as descends the hungry bug

You wander left, under the rug 

The Big Wide New

Speeches are made
Pictures are snapped
A straw bowler flies
A tear is shed
And life begins again

A new chapter
New places
New challenges
New adventures
New friends

For a woman who is
A woman
Not as tall as she'd like
Compassionate, intelligent, witty and fun
A friend

Good byes are said
Tears fall again
Old friends are left
But not really
For in this age we are all connected

But still

Virtual is not face to face
School is not camp
There is no return next season
We know this
You do too

So as you go, pack your heart
With memories of family and friends
Of the people who admire you
Who love you
Of us

Hold them close
As you walk forever forward
Down the path yet traveled
Into the big wide new
Into life