Tag: druid hill park

teamsport

fingers strings steel compress release
balls turn in grace
arc in certainty
bounce in rolling chaos
through portals
past counterstrikes
into destinations
antipathyfree
in run stop pass hold launch strike
force finesse
constitutional policepowerfree
lovely spheres
spinning and flying

druid park from beechwood drive at sunrise
(despite a federal district court finding in 1953 that policy prohibiting interracial basketball, tennis, and golf in city parks was not unconstitutional, city parks were desegregated in 1953—one set of plaintiffs had been prevented from playing tennis together in druid hill park)

call to fascxiom

hoover’s hematemesis
vomited bubbling out windows
down crumblingmortar oxidizedaluminum moldyvinalwood
into buried earthlung springs
mccarthy’s melena
served mysterymeat
in soupkitchen with sugaredwater
largetracing arsenicleadbenzene
nixon’s necrosis
spreading comfortmutation.
wallace’s stent
scalpaling steelsword
excise resist reject from electricbody

wallace statue in druid hill park at sunrise
(dorothy rose blumberg, later convicted and jailed for advocating for better minimum wages and against discrimination and against abuse of civil liberties, was trailed by many fbi agents in 1952 around reservoir hill where she lived, including on her trips to druid hill park)

two antionettes

papa and i made a sèvolan
a bamboo krikèts back
joints turned round and hitched with digo thread
skin of silk from manmans maryaj sentiwon
special days it dansed in the van
in the sky with manman
we call it zwazo

papa said an òm fransè made a zwazo-sèvolan
named antionette like me
we went to see it on a very special day
piknik with taso bannann mamba and dous makos
and zwazo
we walked way up to druid hill

first we saw antionette over the vil
so small
we heard her like a marengwen
closer and bigger and bigger and byen fò
flying over our heads
prettier than zwazo
she circled like a lazy lò
then back over the vil

we are laughing still
in rèv i fly her to manman

from druid hill at sunrise
(in 1910 hubert latham flew an antionette-engine powered plane from halethorpe to fort mchenry, over downtown and patterson park, up to north avenue, around eutaw place then around druid hill park, then south, circling over 1217 saint paul street, over downtown and back to halethorpe–to win prize money offered by baltimore sun owners and also by ross r. winans)

waxed bronze

pause over
my appointment with violent death
cause over

sailors and sldiers at sunrise
(the union soldiers and sailors monument was sanctioned in 1906 and dedicated in druid hill park in 1910, roughly coinciding with three failed attempts to disenfranchise maryland african american voters—it was moved to wyman park near 29th and charles streets in 1959 out of the path of the jones falls expressway)

spaceships

sunwarmed
pink white yellow red orchidmesmerized
orange tea rose thymeinfused
smooth velvet pricklytouched
grovequiet
i am transported
to another place in time
only here and now

conservatory at sunrise
(howard peters rawlings conservatory and botanic gardens of baltimore, opened as the druid hill conservatory in 1888, thrives in druid hill park—unlike conservatories installed in carroll, clifton, and patterson parks and later demolished)

regressive park cents

unsettled i swarm a multitude
invading this place
cycling through so many sundays
greeting strangers in wooded undulating water vistas
an ideal passenger leaving little trace
wanting clear city springs unbuilt boulevards streetcars
primordial flocks and schools of birds and fish.
until i just breath

druids at sunrise
(druid hill park was inaugurated in 1860 by the lame duck know-nothing mayor)