DAKOTA STREET
The three story house on Dakota St.
with tar shingles covered in red bead sprinkles in poor imitation of bricks
but no one could be fooled, very ugly
and very unlike real brick. Durable, though, still there fully intact decades later
when I came again.
Vietnamese were there then.
I must have seemed an intruder.
I certainly felt like it at the time.
To explain that I once lived there
would have been hard
and I didn't try.
Across the Avenue Lou's grocery
was not there anymore, and
the flat-roofed synagogue
was by then an evangelist church.
I missed the rabbis who had me light candles
some holidays and sabbaths, although
I only did that a few times, in truth.
Then there were those older couples
in elegant places next on down the street
who were virtually invisible, unknowable
to a working class five-year-old.
But further on down our street
lived Stevie O'Brien's family.
They were like us -- poorish
working class, friendly though.
But we never became real friends,
and I can't tell why now.
Then there was Dominick and his pretty mother.
They owned the first TV on our street.
I would sometimes go over to see
Hout Gibson westerns that were
two decades old by then but seemed fresh.
I can't remember his mom vividly.
Dominick was smart, tough, athletic.
He didn't take me seriously,
but that is how it was for me.
I didn't engage people very well even then.
The lawns were small but well kept,
large, very high hedges planted long before,
helping establish privacy for the well-to-do
from working class types like us.
No hedges for us or even real lawns.
The many empty lots across the avenue
were of houses long before torn down --
their basements filled in by the most unproductive dirt
fit only for crabgrass and garter snakes --
apparently the remnants of housing rebuilds
having been put off for several decades.
I think the coming of the Great Depression
had changed those plans
like it had changed many others.
An old man came by every so often
on his flatbed horse-drawn truck
to pick up our saved old newspapers
and scrap metals, as he had before
The War and long before.
I had a few friends then that I made
in spite of my rather withdrawn behavior
fed by too much TV watching
and radio too.
June 20, 2022
THE DANISH ACTRESS
A foul accusation given in jealousy --
a man has suffered a painful rejection
and uses beliefs then common:
She bewitched me to distraction.
A woman burned to death, however comely,
cannot give herself to someone else.
The actress, though, still calls to me
now,
a full century later, in apparent excitement.
The words, though, must be supplied,
unless the lip reader can read Danish.
The woman seen, in all her beauty,
provides the image and inspiration,
though in life she must surely be dead.
I would that I had known her then,
even if I would be gone with her.
Living Life Like a River Flows?
We seem to follow where life would lead us.
But we do make decisions all the day long
leading us down to where we think we want to go.
Best not to get too far beyond the apparent flow.
The channel that life is cutting for us
varies constantly, usually in the smallest ways.
But we cannot count on the flow always;
and, we need to provide for the bad.
The worst is always possible but hasn’t happened yet.
The worst would be ultimate dissolution.
If it comes, we will not be here anymore.
The worst exists always in the minds of a few:
the most twisted, the most pathological
may experience it constantly and continuously.
Yet, we cannot allow it to dominate our thoughts.
We must constantly and actively interfere.
The flow cannot be completely trusted.
The mind is not the flow and must be governed.
