Category: community

chrysanthemum ruins

adele dreamed of an ancient city
white broken marble maroon crumbled brick
jumbled concrete bright yellow under a morning sun
she soared and circled slowly down
toward a windless world
eddies of dust spiraled undisturbed as voices
mostly gold streaked white purple red
heralds
journals
correspondents
news
she walked with an august gentleman
scattering seeds of autumn flowers blooming as they passed
“lord baltimore is american”
“my maryland”
turning around they stood in a sea
maroon touched with delicate gold

flower exchange at sunrise
(the baltimore florists exchange operated from 1906 to 1918 on franklin and saint paul streets)

quarantine

enforced
great change in the physical aspect of baltimore
isolation
was brought about by the removal of the buildings along saint paul
limit
cleared into a series of sunken gardens
infection
elaborate stairways
into lonely places

lonely place at sunrise
(in 1914 a thriving, predominantly black neighborhood around saint paul street between lexington and center streets was razed as mayor preston innovated baltimore apartheid)

la bella en santuario

my love sails on the wind
before dawn
strides on sinewy calves and thighs
up hills in morning light
smiles bright compassion
around gathering people
reaches warmly with dark eyes
into those looking from the crowd
speaks with bold clear song
toward the settling sun

oheb shalom at sunrise
(temple oheb shalom dedicated the eutaw place temple in 1892 and used it until 1960—the baltimore hebrew, har sanai, and chizuk amuno congregations also built temples in west baltimore in the early 1890s)

on colgate creek

i met paul on the double track racer
sitting together
tick
tick
tick
tick
up so slow
to the apex
moonlight on water
water all below
free we fly
side by side
down in gravitys waterfall
faster than the other track.

i sail with the merchant marine
paul keeps order in a counting house
and covers the waterfront when i am at sea.
have the
wars and votes and villas and what.

not notorius ribald wild
we walk together in riverview
a band plays
eubie and noble and un maestro italiano
we are together on boardwalk benches
family

industrial creek at sunrise
(in 1890 riverview park, the first of half a dozen local amusement parks, opened for whites on point breeze on the shores of colgate creek and the patapsco, south of what is now broening highway—it closed in 1929—gwynn oak was the last to close, in 1973)

donations as investments

grains of wet alkaline aluminum iron magnesium
separately suspended and adrift
settling in bonded tetrahedral and octahedral sheets
attapulgite beidellite dickite halloysite illite kaolinite
montmorillonite nacrite nontronite saponite smectite sepiolite
layering in soils
plastic
molded tablets bricks tiles cups pots urns
distinct
sintered ceramic earthen porcelain stone
composite

asylum at sunrise
(in 1876 william rayner led the dedication of the hebrew orphan asylum’s new building on ashburton and rayner streets)

3641

if the worlds refugees could queue to pier nine
fantasys freedom and mirages bounty
would rise in a vast choir
exhaling the pain of sixteen centuries.
if we were to stop making refugees

pier 9 at sunrise
(in 1868 the steamer baltimore arrived at pier nine on the north shore of locus point from bremen for the first time—by 1914 pier nine was receiving forty thousand immigrants a year—the current world refugee population is estimated to be over sixty-five million)

community in orogeny

colliding continents
compress and congeal
veins of granite gabbro basalt
layers of sandstone limestone banded iron
shifting forming figuring
uplifting mountains of quartzite slate gneiss
through clouds
sun wind vapor rock resound
and rain flies like music through the valleys and streams

yellow lines at sunrise
(in november of 1864 there were spirited celebrations of maryland’s new constitution, which abolished slavery—including a large one at mount vernon hall on howard street)

changed alleys

in apple liberty bottle dutch
argyle union brandy honey
happy whiskey sugar wagon
petticoat strawberry welcome
a struggle
for safe intimate space
working walking families
sheltering
intimate
tenacious communion
as a maelstrom gathered
hewn frames shaken blistered scoured in blasts sun and rain
in the eye of hatred and fear
powered by saturating stifling greed and ignorance
the settling storm
relentless
moved great hills of sand
swept away timber and cobbles
moving on so painfully slow
matched by the craton under small streets

strawberry alley at sunrise
(most alleys, like strawberry alley now dallas street, where poor working families lived in the 18th century, have been renamed or redeveloped)