Tag: wagners point

for jeannettes

slowly toward a city across the harbor
dolls eyes look from thickets
wild ginger dewsteeps pathside
trout lilies greenyellow bottomland
in breathing footfall rhythm
bottlebrush grass laces remnant wood
wild-rye sews small streambanks
purpletop rattles unpaved road
in thinking breathful melody
nodding bur marigolds pool dark mirrors
sneezeweed runs ditches and marsh
frostweed mounds vacant lotmeadows
in warmingchilling chorded nervemuscle
inkberries assort waxwings
winterberries cluster robins
skunk cabbages unfold turkeys
in echoing faint chorus
this year is my passing song
my love the walking minutes

cove at sunrise
(lifelong wagners point resident and activist jeannette skrzcek died in 1998 from liver and colon cancer)

who may die

live still love calling
under infernocloud mushrooming miles
cast out away in steel ropes
withering shrinking in flamestorm
abandoned inside ringing glimmering wandering fire
uncrossed
wouldbegod casts and disappears
inkgreenblack oily smoke
i suppose a heavy metal bird should scream

shipping terminal at sunrise
(in 1965 a nine alarm oil fire threatened residents of wagners point who struggled on under criminal neglect by the city until the late 1990s)

communitycide

commissioners sprawl about the table
misters bonefish, toadley, macflie, spongeson, and mahlisck
overwhelming putrid farting with donated cigar smoke
dulling single minds with gifted liquor
playing pocketpool with rolls of dough
sharing needles of noxious high
too many kings in the strange deck
they gamble away
children asleep by a coalbin outside
dream of greenfields and bent fishingpoles

southern districts shoreline at sunrise
(in 1922 southern and eastern districts were zoned entirely, including pockets of existing communities, for heavy industry)

how far you go

leeward
to peas beans melons cantaloupes asparagus crabs oysters
orchards picnics
sick sailors immigrants dying contagious with mary
suburban mirage manguano cannery company town
baseball beer dancing burlesque
manufactury refinery petrolasphaltchemicalpool rails
gastank smokestack waste
liberty victory jumboizing containerizing
community clutching sandymuddyoiled rubbishroad
to fairfieldbrownfield
and beyond
to pleasant prospect adventure utopia
sweating river

brdge at sunrise
(in 1916 the hanover street bridge, now vietnam veterans memorial bridge, over the middle branch of the patapsco, replaced the long bridge between light street and fairfield)