Grammar school neighborhood kids coming down the hill from the Fort Greene monument commemorating the Continental soldiers who died on the Prison ships during the War of I dependence beneath the American elms, so yellow in the last throes of autumn, them kicking the leaves as they go as do I
ps the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, is a 149-foot-tall Doric column constructed of Deer Isle granite
Autumn settles on the boat pond
Central Park trees
Green to Orange to Yellow
On the pond
Two radio-controlled sloops
Race
Driven South
By a crisp Northwesterly
An imitation
America Cup___
Here
Central Park
Not the East Village
Rosy red cheek children
Run around the pond
An arm's reach
From foreign nannies and young mothers___
I remember being young
Change of autumn
Of an October wind
Through the trees
Of the Blue Hills.
Like then
All the colors
So special
The blue of the sky
The white of the clouds, silver and gray too__
Now
Autumn
Transforming the trees' color spectrum
From Green to yellow to orange to red
Under
The strong sunlight of October
Hearing the children's laughter
Remember mine
And my mother's laughter
So long ago in our backyard
In the Blue Hills.
Laughter...
Autumn en Ile St. Louis
November Paris 1984
Early morning
Cold wet rain
On Rue des Deux Ponts
On Ile St. Louis in Paris
A gray morning
Comme chaque autumn
Sur le Rue Des Deux Ponts
Kicking leaves into the gutter
Heading to the corner cafe
With my mistress' Scottie in tow
Angus
Sniff sniff sniff
For the scents of dogs.
Arrive at the Cafe Louis IX
Push the door open
Angus I enter.
Inside thick with Gitane smoke
Three workers a le bar
There
Chaque matin comme moi et Angus
On their third Calvados
A nod
A nod back.
Another nod to the barman.
Henri serves a cafe, croissant, et Calva.
Rain outside
Angus rests his head
On my boots
The floor smell of Gitane cigarette ash.
Tobacco and other men's boots.
Outside
Cold wet rain
No hurry in none of us
Except Angus
Eager to press his nostrils
To the gutter
To treasure the bouquet of dogs.
Pas encore
A nod to Henri
Un'autre Calva
Si vous plait.
The three workers nod approval.
We have never spoken a word.
Just that nod.
We all believe in Sloth.
Especially with the autumn rain
Sweeping the Rue des Deux-Ponts
Paris
Autumn
1984
Une bonne matin
Le pluie
Angus and me
Ile St. Louis.
Written Oct 24, 2011
Putney was not exactly the center of London, but I chose to stay with Sara. We were the best of friends. Dawn came early at her house. Every morning the record executive walked her sweet little dog, Maysie, in Richmond Park. I was a stranger to the Royal Park, the largest in London, and was pleasantly surprised by its wild expanse of bracken meadows and even more so by the spectacle of rutting stags. Autumn was the time of the year, when the male red deer contest for hinds by a display of their antlers, bellowing, and plain old knock-down fighting.
The stags roared at each other, as we walked past the harems. We were no threat, but barking dogs bring out the protective instinct in the big males. They don't want anything fucking around with their mates and I stay well out of their way. Antlers have points and Sara told me that several walkers had been charged by the big bucks.
While I am covered by National Health in the EEU thanks to my Irish passport, I have little interest in getting gored by an irate stag. Sara guided me to safety. Maysie was not a barker. She knew her place on the feeding chain and I gave her a little treat as a reward for not irking the deer.
She was a good little dog.
On Saturday I traveled north from New York on a Chinese bus.
Greyhound really.
They charge $25.
7am departure.
I fell asleep on the Williamsburg Bridge and woke in the Storrs Hills on Connecticut
The driver was pulling into Burger King.
"Ten minutes."
I walked inside. Mickie D's rival was offering a breakfast burrito. I opted to eat the two bananas in my bag.
The other passengers were stuffing down fast food. The feeding fest was an ugly spectacle and I climbed over the barrier to a closed road. A land mover was parked on the asphalt. No one had sat in it recently. The only work in this town was at Burger King. Too many rich people. Too few jobs, but I had one for the first time since March.
New England had been scrapped to the stone bone by the Ice Age. Bogs and ponds and lakes are tattoos of that primordial time. Wetland in the autumn. The sound of cars and trucks on the interstate. The air was cool. Summer was one week back and nine months forward. I felt drops of rain.
The leaves were dull under the overcast. I breathed the air. The damp rot of vegetation was a black hole. In my youth I smelled this scent every October. It was Eau de New England.
I turned around to face north. The clouds parted for several heartbeats and I hurried across the cracked pavement to snap a photo.
This moment was only one.
There have been millions of seconds sliced into billions and trillions.
But only one of these.
The bus was ready to go
The North waited for me.
With patience.
Friends and family too.
I ran back to the bus.
It was good to be back in ageless autumn.
Written 9/13/11
My family home on the South Shore bordered on a small woods. Every October the trees beyond the old stone wall turned brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges. The glorious explosion of color lasted several weeks. The wind ripped the weaker leaves from the branches and they fell by the millions into our back yard. My brothers and sisters loved running through the rustling layers of decay, but come the weekend the fun ended with my father ordering my older brother and me to rake the leaves into piles. Once the lawn was visible my father lit our labor afire. The smoke of those leaves filled the yard with the fragrance of burnt autumn offerings.
The next morning the leaves were replaced by their cousins. Less than before, yet millions still and my brother and I reaped another harvest of leaves. Another fire. The Sisyphean ritual was repeated until the trees were bare.
I hated raking leaves. The task seemed as senseless as mowing the lawn. A chore my father demanded from us and his sons performed his command without question. Young boys in the early 60s were prized for their devotion to obedience. Merit badges and gold stars paved the avenues of success. My older brother followed the path through university and law school.
I rejected the lawn, the station wagon, the two-car garage, and raking the lawn.
The East Village was my home in the late 70s.
The tenements were wrapped by concrete sidewalks and the the wind disposed of the leaves from the ornamental pear trees on East 10th Street. I didn't touch a rake for most of my adult life and loved this freedom from the fetish of neatness tormenting the suburbs, although I missed the smell of a good autumn fire as did many conventional New Yorkers.
My good friend AP told of an Easthampton client who ordered the landscapers to blow errant leaves from the estate's 20-acre lawn. Before the crew finished the job, the billionaire came out of his mansion and requested that the workers pick out the finest leaves for a pristine pile of leaves for his children to run through after school.
"That's the way of the rich." AP deals with such people all the time as a architect.
We laughed at their excess. That 1% knows how to spend the 95% of the wealth.
After hearing that story I went to shoot baskets at my local park on deKalb Avenue. No one was on the court, but several park workers raked leaves. I thought about my father and the East Village and then the rich guy in Easthampton. No one could escape raking leaves and upon leaving the park I commented to one worker about this task and he said, "Yeah, we're bringing them to another park, so the kids can run through them. They love that."
Same as rich kids in Easthampton.
And me too.
It does make a pretty sound.
For the rich the poor and the in-between.
