where is the bridge

pictures and stories are windows in walls i don’t see past
a black mirror
warm blood on skin yellow white black
someone washing away toward a vast ocean
i navigate by echo

red black yellow white at sunrise
(the reginald f lewis museum of maryland african american history and culture opened on president and pratt streets in 2005)

a friends witness

women walking with child
children laughing afraid dreaming
mothers in days slipping away
great grand old faces facing sun in wrinkles
all suddenly running
covering
burning
like oil and rice thrown in a flame
instant eternal cauldron of pain and despair
noble ignorance aside feasting on phosphorescent sands
pulls humanity back toward a lifeless sea
unenlightened unfulfilled unfurthered
stop it
all believers
be brave
some mornings come with no warning

meeting house after sunrise
(in 1965 norman morrison, stony run meeting executive secretary, poured kerosene on and immolated himself outside robert mcnamara’s pentagon office)

heart open

shadows unspiraling unturning under
pink peach light blue mercy
seen smiling faithfully
each day new sky
friendly singing
scarves and kerchiefs spin infinitely
for she who must be saved

baltimore and calvert at sunrise
(gillis memorial christian community church deacon and choir singer hattie carroll was murdered by a tobacco land-owner from charles county at the emerson hotel on baltimore and calvert streets in 1963)

movingon lookingback

first tomatoes
stew and soup
onions cabbage carrots squash lentils beets
bread and butter
fish and plums
ornate lock in rabbi soul
circular chapel blue green pieces
shining dove in water
liniment in oil
service overseas
walking in flowers to sound of crows

museum and synagogue at sunrise
(the jewish museum of maryland was founded in 1960 to save the lloyd street synagogue from demolition)

with the devils of the sea

oxblood coral crushedstrawberry
rose runninginto ruby
paperthin bluesky mirrorbright snowplaintivewhite
sky between cloudsafterrain
fisheggs dewsprinkled
deadleafpurple
blackyellow blueblack gold
eelsblood paleblue
veins orangepeel shiveringice
oilywhite darkolive rainbowluster
applegreen pearldew
yellowcream palechocolate
cinnabar charcoal goldsprinkled
teadust ironrust
sunsteel
greenvioletblack copper
copper bluegreen
rosewhite turquoiseblue
yellowearth
terracotta
twilight skypure watercalm settingsun sparklingriver
whitemarblestained sapphiresea lateautumn
stormhiddensunbathed rayguilded
meltingsnow leadensky
dullyellowsky curdlingfog
whitecap blackcoat greensatin redblood troddensnow
lightdark infinite
random chosen

bma at sunrise
(in 1909 henry walters remodeled four houses on charles street in mount vernon square and opened the art collection started by his father to the public)

gift of a site

walking in hills and dells
hogs mill out of the orchard into bondage
toads rustle toward water barbaric
deer graze in circuits progressing
ravens encircle anticipating
sparrows forage in microcosm
cows linger about stables ignorant
sheep graze superstitious
a few hundred birds in song capable
weasels forerun
roosters confer
geese gather around opportunity
cats habituate each on its own
rats steal in order attention obedience discrimination and memory
ox and horse till usefully
falcons train on pigeons
snails rasp across tasty objects
flies light on still hands
and snakes measure air with tongue-craft
so join hands each a teacher farmer artisan
nonexempt in falling icy fangs

homewood at sunrise
(in 1902 the land for the johns hopkins homewood campus, as well as wyman park and the way between wyman park and druid hill park, was donated by eight people, including david carroll)

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)

two children

benevolent corporations
sharing and sharing alike
on a wide sunlit treeshaded avenue
where young men learn great things
and sick heal.
father’s anthropocenic cryonic motherless toddlers
careen about the shrubbery
as birth and death sit chatting on the benches
his adolescents skateboard around the fountains
as truth and eternity remark upon the statuaries.
conestogas and teslas
roll slowly up and down his wide avenue
minding the traffic control devices and the speed of light.
in a building symmetrically added
someone may find the beginning of time

howard street at sunrise
(funded through his last will and testament, johns hopkins university began operating on howard street in 1876)