a city reveals itself on sunday morning

a city reveals itself on sunday morning


how empty the streets are
only a few walk like me
everyone else knows it's sunday
early on sunday
only a few
catch the wind whip through what is built up
and how useless and littered it is
when no one but me is around
others dream or wish a god
others prone and sleepless
or on arthritic knees
or lost in snores
away from the emptiness
of the built up world


~~


1 26 07









Untermeyer Park


i love the way
trees open for me
and i see downhill
to the river beyond
and after that, granite
wall of higher ground
i will one day visit
again

~

1 9 07






do you remember the milk deliveries?



i sorta remember the milk deliveries, but,
like most things, it's vague...
like i remember a milk truck in front of my house,
a shadowy image, and perhaps it's only imagination
these years later

but i do remember the milk machines
we had one a few steps away from our house
Dellwood, i think...

milk was a quarter a quart
but, like all things
it went up, two cents i think

can't remember how long the machine was operational there,
but it was there when i was in St. Denis grammer school

we used to climb up the fence next to it
to get to its roof,
just to stand up there

when i was in fourth grade,
and was in a school play - Nutcracker, i think -
my brother climbed up there, but
fell and got his arm caught
in the sharp fencing and it got ripped open
like a red mouth, and i didn't go to the play
and he went to the hospital

we used to have an old Assyrian lady renting
the back apartment who didn't speak english
and used to go out on the street on sunday mornings
in her old cotton nightgown, asking people
to set her fat gold watch for her
in a language they didn't understand
or shuffling out there to buy
a quart of Dellwood milk
with only a quarter

~


1 22 06