Life on the Street

L.L. here, with Random Acts of Poetry, musing about streets. Technically, I didn't grow up near one. That's what town and city kids do. I grew up near a road.

The road had its seasons, just as trees and waterways have theirs. In Spring it was pure mud, the kind you picture on an old wagon trail. Rutted. Boot pulling. Dirt pungent. "Smooch!" said the mud, when you tried to get away.

Then shale trucks would come, spreading sharp stones that cut our feet. But they put the mud in her place--until hot sun baked Spring into Summer, bringing black-eyed Susans and wild strawberries to the roadside.

Dust came too. Nobody liked to be near the road when an occasional Ford pickup flew by, raising brown clouds that made you cough. So town men came and sprayed. Black oil. It can't have been a healthy fix, but it (mostly) soothed the dust.

Autumn brought golden grasses, leaves swirling, the blue heron, and fog. And mud again, though not so much as in Spring, since shale still held it at bay. By November, we'd get our first winter storm and plows would scrape along, sending snow and shale flying.

Cleared and cold, the road iced over. I still remember grabbing worn leather skates that hurt my feet, and going out to glide, trip, stumble, glide... down the road. Snow banks were a wall we couldn't see past. But on days like those it seemed I might just laugh them away.

----

This week, in the poems you posted, there were streets that made me smile and one that made me cry. Here they are...

Excerpt of Erin's We Liked to Talk I Guess

There was a phone
In every room
At 909 Main Street
(except the bathroom).

Upstairs,
One in each bedroom
And one in the hallway
(and we used them all).

Downstairs,
One in the kitchen
One in the dining room
(shaped like a piece of corn on the cob)
continue reading

Bradley's Errand (he left it in my comment box, so I gave it a name and changed some of the letter cases... well, that's what can happen when you leave a poem unchaperoned at my place : )

Last Saturday,
while driving around
the bucolic suburbs
of greater Philadelphia,

running ordinary
weekend errands,

I clicked the signal
and turned right

on to
Street Road.

Street Road?

"Let's name it Street Road,"
I imagined
them saying --

those well-bred,
founding fathers,

plain, yet
possessed with
such a
staggering
lack
of
imagination.

And lastly, Maureen's Reunions: Father, July 18, 1990. Because it's about the death of her father, I've included the entire poem. It seemed like I shouldn't excerpt something this tender.

Scene 1: 2909 North Nottingham Street

The clock set at 4:15 p.m.
Before 4:30 I lost you
in a chiming of ever-closer sirens.

From you to phone to glass door I
watched for that blur of red
— rose-deep, a harder color than I want to remember —
screaming to come clear.

Help in a red and white wagon pushing
for last tries before unlasting breaths.

The pulse punishes the memory, the adrenaline
maxing out when you need it most.

The noise was a pain.
Everywhere for seven minutes before
then suddenly here where it had to be.

My hands to my ears,
automatic-like, did no one any good.

I didn't expect the rescue in front of me to go bad.

I didn't want to be in control

Of a 63-year-old woman panicking
and my not-yet two-year-old urging,
Grandpa get up! Grandpa get up!

This is the part
of the parts I never reacted to:

How a half-dozen volunteers arrived
in less than eight minutes

How they rolled up a corner
of the antique Persian carpet

How they pulled you
from the bathroom where you collapsed
to the place we call the living room

Where they used mouth-to-mouth
— so much better were they than I —
and shot you up to trick your heart into rising again

How they couldn't wait
to stash the detritus of their care

How I couldn't wipe away the sticky pool of cells
absorbing our newly refinished floor

How it was over
and then just began

A neighbor I had not let in
saying, Go. Don't give it any mind.
I'll take care of it. And the baby.

(Did I forget about the baby?)

Scene 2: 1701 North George Mason Drive

I, in front with the driver,
you, Dad, in back,
an EMT still doing his best
to keep your beat to the beat.

In Emergency, before I quit
telling them I couldn't sign any papers,
you, alone in some cubicle with a doctor
making decisions of his own, were already gone.

Kept busy answering for information
not one of us had, I cycled all the numbers
from Jacksonville, to Venice, and Ft. Myers, Florida
to Indiana, Kentucky, and Bethpage, Tennessee

Startled into starting all over again
when a nurse hushed us to a private room.

The news was changed.

I couldn't have prepared for
the difference I saw
in you

Cleaned up, that sheet of antiseptic white
giving no hint of the way
your chest had been pounded.

Lifelines removed, your eyes stiller,
the curtains on their rolling rings
shutting in a private moment

A wife somewhere carrying on.

We were together
one last time before our last time.

How much time
was enough time
to be with you?

Cases waited. They needed the space.

Someone asked about organ donations.
Someone else said you were too old

To give up
anything but your corneas.

I asked what you'd want. Your license didn't say.

On the way out I took in hand
a brown paper bag, more fragile than the satchel
we lug groceries in. More plain than the kind for tidying
papers we bundle every Wednesday.

T-shirt. Socks (no match: you were color-blind).
Black shoes? (A guess.) Belt. Billfold.
Watch worn since retirement.

Left over
Left out
Left for.

What I have of you still
I hold in safe-keeping

Your watch keeping its own time.

All RAP Participants

Laura’s I Am the Gate
Nancy’s Our Street
Melissa’s she, stirring
Eric’s Hidden Joy
Jim’s Parables
Susan’s No Fairy Tale
Glynn’s Hope, Blinking and Rues de Martyrs
nAncy’s a road
Dave’s On Quincy Street
Kathleen’s Dear Frankie
Maureen’s Reunions: Father
Marilee’s Laurel Hedge
LL's 56 Irving Place, Gramercy Park and Quick
Cindy’s Crossing at Kicker Road
Simple Country Girl’s Street Address: End of Dirt Road and Farm Door Beckons
Liz’s Highway 60
Prairie Chick’s One Country Mile
Linda’s The Farm on Buffalo Ridge
Claire’s Blikkie
Monica’s When He Lived on Horsefly Road
Susanne’s 716 El Rancho Drive
Emily's Stonybrook
Kelly's March on St. June
Missy K's West Washington

Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh photo, and post by L.L. Barkat.

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