Noon
West of Boston and 128
Mid-March
Lying on my back
On my sister Pam's sloping lawn
The grass withered under the Winter sun
The grass awaiting the Spring to green__
Beyond the lawn
A steep descends into a gully
An Eastern pine rises from below
Several others
My eyeball estimate
Over a hundred feet in the air
Over two hundred years old
Its seed birth date
Back to the 18th Century
Older than me
Yet we share separate oldnesses
I 72
From 1952
A 20th Century Man
I'M A TWENTIETH CENTURY MAN
The Kinks
1971 hit___
Now March 2025
I rise from the lawn
Carefully climb down
The steep gully to the Eastern Pine
Stand under its shade
The trunk rises
Bare of branches to the boughs above
I hug the trunk
Three arm length in width
My nose to the bark
Breathe the scent
Close my eyes
Sensing
Northern forests from here to the St. Lawrence River___
Here beneath the Eastern Pine
Pine needles underfoot
How has this giant
Survived the centuries of American greed?__
Same as me
Lucky
My sister Pam stands at the edge of the lawn
I look up and see her
And see__
June 1, 1957
St. Joseph Street
Jamaica Plains
My older brother and I
6 and 5
Stand outside Nana's three-decker
At the end of St. Jospeh's Street
Across the Jamaicaway
Arnold's Arboretum
Trees, and trees and trees__
A station wagon arrives
My father get out
My mother carrying a baby
Pam, my new sister
Almost sixty-seven years ago__
Now 2025
None of us
The tree, she, and me old
Now
We are alive
21st Century man and woman
21st Century Tree fromthe 17th Century
Together
Onward into the future
From the distant past and the now and the beyond___
THE DUNWICH HORROR was published in 1929 by Weird Tales. Three years earlier HP Lovecraft had stayed in Wilbraham east of Springfield, Mass. The lost farmhouses scattered on the low mountains exuded a foreboding gloom inspired this tale, especially the 18th Century Whateley Farmhouse on Beebe Road.
THE DUNWICH HORROR recounts the fictional life of Wilbur Whateley, son of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father, who matures to manhood in less than ten years.
The town's secrets remain secrets, until a college professor and his co-ed aide visit at the Miskatonic University'S Library, where they meet a young man checking out the dreaded NECROMICON, a time-worn book of arcane rituals.
THE DUNWICH HORROR has long been considered one of the core stories of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, in which Wilbur Whateley, son of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father reputed to be named Yog-Sothoth, and the strange events surrounding his birth and precocious development.
THE DUNWICH HORROR was a short story written in 1928 and first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales. The tale takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts, where the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story.
This past October my comrade in arms and I headed to Boston. The battle with my disease had sapped my strength and I was in no condition to drive north. My comrade Brigette had the wheel and I sat a prisoner in the passenger seat. The traffic on I95 jockeyed for position on the interstates like demo derby drivers on crank. The two-and-half-hour trip took five hours and were more than happy to complete our journey to the Marciano residence south of Nine Mile Pond.
My good friend Eric Marciano passed away in the summer and I wanted to see his wife. The film director was a true New Englander. When I mentioned to his son Zach that I was visiting several HP Lovecraft sites in New England he mentioned that the house on Beebe Road inspired THE DUNWICH HORROR. Brigette and I immediately said we had to go the dreaded house the next morning.
Meredith said that the Wilbraham Drive-In showed horror and bike films.
"Young couples loved horror films. The terror forced young girls into teenage boys' arms."
Watching THE DUNWICH HORROR's trailer it was easy to see how.
Zach easily found he house on Beebe Road. He had long been a fan of the horrors of HP Lovecraft and its setting amongst the stunted trees of Wilbraham Mountains epitomized the gothic horror the arcane world lost to humanity.
Even on a sunny day thee was something about the house that betrayed Lovecrafts's inspiration for THE DUNWICH HORROR
The two-story house surrounded by trees had added steps to the entrance, a side access and electricity, but little else had changed in ninety years.
We set up our signs.
Free Poetry.
We didn't believe in social media.
If someone stopped, someone stopped.
Meredith went first.
Robert Frost's THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED.
One of Eric's favorites, which the poet read at JFK's inauguration in 1961.
Brigette Lundy Paine followed with one of our favorite poets.
Ranier Maria Rilke.
We hate rich people.
Zach Marciano is a true fan of HP Lovecraft.
He read from THE DUNWICH HORROR. He like I love the terror.
Gorgons and hydras.
My reading was inspired by THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH
A Cthulhu legend of haunted New England.
Only a Volkwagon passed us during the FREE POETRY reading.
A dog ran from the house.
It did not bark.
The dog did not scare Brigette.
But not during the day
Raised on Falmouth Foresides
And the South Shore.
In 1976
I left for good.
New York bound,
Two years now
Yet I miss New England
The White Mountains
The Maine Coast
Old Orchard Beach,
Portland's Eastern Promenade
The two old schooners rotting off Wicassett
Decaying river towns;
Lowell, Manchester, Saco, Chicopee, White River Junction
Beaches,
Nantasket, Wollaston, Horseneck Beach, Truro,
Cape Ann, Gloucester, Marblehead, the Beverly Salem Bridge
Lobstah, fried clams, Italian Sandwiches, and damned Chowdah.
From Lake Champlain across the Green Mountains
To the Connecticut River
Over the White Mountains
On the The Kancamagus Highway
Down to Newport and Across the Block Island.
New England. Oh New England.
Bridgeport, New Haven, New London.
We are not New York.
South of Boston
The Blue Hills
Swimming in the Quincy Quarries,
Tramping to the top of Chickatawbut
At 517 feet to the east
Big Blue to the west
635 feet.
Nothing taller from Key West to Mount Cadillac in Acadia
Just Blue Hill Tower
The hills of my youth
Of my teen years
Sex with Linda Imhoff
Long-legged
Shaven clean
Twenty -six
Us
Naked in the back seat of a VW
Possible
Not Easy
But possible
At Eighteen atop Rattlesnake Hill.
No forests
Fifteen generation trees
Stone farm walls
Tumbled by the frost
Bog ponds and swamps
My home town.
Forever New England.
Back in 2021 my friend Charlotte was scheduled to fly south to the Caribbean. Her morning flight was cancelled by Jet Blue. A massive blizzard had been predicted to hit the Northeast with up to 18 inches of snow. By nightfall the accumulation amounted to less than 6 inches. More was to come, but this snowstorm will not come close to the Blizzard of 1978.
Early in February 1978 an Arctic cold front and a cold air mass met off the coast of North Carolina. Weathermen misjudged the severity of the approaching storm and people went to work, expecting nothing out of the ordinary.
They were wrong.
By the afternoon officials realized the seriousness of the approaching winter cyclone and people were sent home
Late.
Snowplows sought to clear the roads
It was a futile effort.
Cars on the highways were buried in snowdrifts.
Supermarkets were emptied of everything.
Some Bostonians brave the savage weather.
Most stayed home.
No one realized the tragedy happening on I-95.
Not until the morning.
128 was a parking lot.
Fourteen stranded motorists died of carbon monoxide poisoning on I-95.
Logan Airport was only open for emergency flights.
I called my father and asked, "You want me to come back?"
"There is no way to get here. No planes. No trains. No cas."
"That bad?"
"Yes, but we all right. How's New York?"
"Closed too."
"You take care."
"I will."
The Northeast recovered slowly. Roads were cleared.
According to Wikipedia black ice, sometimes called clear ice, is a thin coating of glaze ice on a surface, especially on roads. The ice itself is not black, but visually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it. Eric Mitchell sent this photo of his skating across a frozen lake in the Berkshires. The ice looked as smooth as glass. I love pond hockey, but it has become as rare as black ice.
Dakota from the 169 Bar had heard my tale of skating on the sidewalks of the East Village in 1992. He laughed in disbelief, however the rock-n-roll bartender hailed from Tucson and no one from the desert knows anything about ice other than ice cubes for a drink.
This winter has been exceedingly mild with no snow. Maine was beset by a deep freeze and a circular floe of ice formed on the Presumpscot River upstream from the old SD Warren paper mill in Westbrook. Newspaper reported the phenomena as a galactic apparition. None of them have lived through a New England winter where trees in Aroostock County exploded in the arctic cold.
Another time I was driving taxi down Clearwater Street next to the Christian Science Mother Church in Boston. The asphalt of the back road was covered in black ice. I tapped on my brakes the the Checker Cab went into a side slide. Two Boston cops were eating donuts at the end of the block. The driver noticed my approach.
Slow and elegant.
He tried to pull ahead, but the cop cruiser’s rear tires caught no traction. Both officer watch in anticipation of a crash. The Checker stopped an inch from the cop car. All three of us smiled at each other.
Back in the 1970s ice was ice. Sometimes good and maybe times in the century of climate change not good.
Back in the 20th Century the ice was thick on Watchic Pond.
Twelve inches thick.
Good for skating once the snow was shoveled off the surface, but nothing beat skating up 2nd Avenue.
Nothing at all.
In early September of 1960 Hurricane Donna struck New England as a category 2/3 storm. The radio station WBZ announced numerous school closing led by Beaver County Day School and closely followed by my primary school on the South Shore, Our Lady of the Foothills. My older brother and I were happy to stay home. We were new kids in town.
That morning a raging gale whipped through the woods of the Blue Hills. Telephone wires moaned with each gust and the windows ofour split-level ranch house windows vibrated in their sashes. The electricity died at noon and my father lit a kerosene lamp, which he placed on the kitchen table.
Our family of seven huddled around the flame like Neanderthals sheltering in a cave.
Several hours later the howling hurricane abated to a whisper.
“Where are you going?” my mother demanded with hands on her hips, her voice ringing with the authority of a woman, who had carried five babies in her womb.
“Outside to show them the eye.” My father loved a good storm.
“Hurricanes are not a joke.” My mother had experienced the 1938 hurricane. That tempest didn’t have a name, yet hundreds of New Englanders had died in its path.
“I know.” My father shrugged in weak surrender to the truth.
"You act, as if you don't."
Hurricane Edna in 1954 had destroyed his sailboat on Watchic Pond. The hull lay in our backyard.
Six years later he had yet to repair the damage to the mast.
He never had much free time and five kids under the age of ten were a lot of work.
“The skies have cleared." My father looked out the window and then back to my mother.
"We’ll only be a few minutes.”
“I wanna go too.” My two-year old brother bounced off his high chair.
"Not a chance." My mother grabbed his wrist. Padraic had almost died at birth from pneumonia. She wasn't giving Nature any second chances and sternly regarded my father. “Only a few minutes.”
"Maybe even less."
"Then go." My mother trusted my father to obey his promise, since he loved her enough to convert to Catholicism.
“I’ll keep them safe.” My father led us outside.
We lived in the shadow of Chickatawbut Hill.
Branches were scattered across the yard.
Overhead a counter-clockwise swirl of the cloud funnel opened to the blue heavens.
“That is the eye of the storm.”
The three of us 360ed on the lawn to gawk at the storm’s awesome power and glory.
Lightning pulsed within the cloud wall like the Aurora Borealis. If my best friend hadn’t drowned a month ago, the cyclonic display would have reinforced my faith in the Almighty. Instead I said, “Wow.”
Rain dotted the walkway. The wind was soon once more a gale. The raindrops stung our skin.
My mother yelled for us to get inside.
My father lifted his finger to indicate we wanted a few more seconds.
He had fought the Maine’s Great Fire of 1949. I never had seen him scared of anything other than my mother’s wrath. He quickly explained to us how hurricanes formed in the tropics. We were 9 and 8. His meteorological lesson was lost on his sons and the oppressive pressure of the powerful storm weighed heavily on our flesh.
“Remember this for the rest of your life. Few people see this.”
My mother’s next demand was an ultimatum.
“If you don’t come in, I’m locking the doors.” She was serious.
“We better do as she says.” My father guided us inside the house. He gave my mother a hug. She was relieved to have us back inside.
The second half of the hurricane stuck within minutes and lasted into the evening.
The weatherman on WBZ radio announced the all-clear message wagon, as we were going to sleep. School had been cancelled throughout New England. My father was excited as a child on Christmas Eve and he whispered, “Tomorrow Revere Beach.”
The beach there was ideal for watching the storm die against land. Giant waves would slap the concrete flood walls with a force strong enough to make the streets shudder with fear.
The boyish joy in his voice kept us awake for another three minutes, for tomorrow promised to be a day of big waves and wild sea spray.
Eve was seduced by a snake and ate an apple. God exiled Adam and Eve from Eden without mercy. Coming from New England I loved apples and especially my mother's apple pie, but the Church divined that the Apple was sin. An apple, but what else was to be expected from a merciless God who has burned cities to the ground?
Satan has offered us Judas Priest and black leather.
I don't believe in the power of either.
Only the desire of the eternal woman for an apple.
Especially in the dark of a New England winter night.
Last week Thai wildlife officers captured a monacled cobra. These snakes cause more deaths in Thailand than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, since the Naja kaouthia's venom can cause death in less than an hour. I have seen them in pits at zoos. Nothing scares me more.
One monsoon season I was staying on Koh Phi Phi. I returned home from the kathoey bar to my bungalow. Something shadowy was resting on my window sill. I thought they were my socks, even though I hadn't worn thong tao or ถุงเท้า for months. I reached for them to hear a warning hiss. I jumped back from danger and flicked on the light to discover a brown snake showing its fangs. It slithered away with alarming speed and I fled the bungalow, as Adam should have run from Eve in the Garden of Eden.
A Thai ladyboy at the bar laughed and explained, "It brown snake. Not have color. Not poison. Snake run. Not death. Stay fight. Dead. Sure. You want beer?"
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.
People had lived underneath Big Blue Hill or Massachusett for hundreds of years.
Behind my house on the South Shore was a small woods. Old mounds rose from the dirt. Tipping pits filled with trash from the 1800s and further back into time.
Some Indian.
Some colonial.
History.
We were 9 year-old boys.
We smashed every bottle knowing no one knows nothing about country ways better than a nine year old boy.
From a peaceful resting place near the water
Rene was a youth born to run from the Acushnet River
Run to Boston in 1964 to be wild
It was a good time to be young
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
Down to New York
Down to be someone
Down with Warhol
Down with the scene
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
He spoke in poetry
He helped people to fame
He was loved by many
Many loved him back
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
His words were sweet
His words were harsh
He survived his hardness
Without ever becoming too hard
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
The artist aged a gentleman
His mind remained a keen 15
He was a runaway at heart
They never go home
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
Your friends are close at hand
Walk Away Rene Don't Run
There is no God with a revolver.
Rene Ricard was also involved with the AVATAR, Boston's hippie newspaper.
I have a copy of it somewhere.
Probably stashed with my last jar of Quaaludes.
I didn't know Rene well, but he made me laugh and I love anyone who can tell a good story.
To hear DON'T WALK AWAY RENEE by the Left Banke, please go to the following URL
Hail storms are rare in the Northeast, but this afternoon my comrade Eric Bad Boy experienced hail driving from Albany to the Berkshires.
"I thought we going to get hit by a tornado. What's it like in New York?"
"Sunny and humid." I was fighting traffic across the Manhattan Bridge. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
"Damn, here comes some more."
I could hear the hail rattling his car.
"I'll call you later."
Eric hung up and I continued across the East River.
It was a nice night for hockey at MSG.
Go Bruins.
ps to Boston sports fans Da Chief was Celtics Center Robert Parrish.
While the United States Postal Service has no official creed or motto the words 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.' are carved into Manhattan's James Farley Post Office.
According to Wikipedia the phrase was derived from a Herodutus translation describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers circa 500 BCE
"It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed."
The US Post Service has mirrored this devotion to duty since its creation by Benjamin Franklin in 1791, however Saturday service was curtailed in New England by the heavy snowfall from Superstorm Nemo.
Mottos change with the times and this weekend's failure to complete the appointed rounds served as a harbinger of decreased service, since the political hacks running the service have announced that later this year Saturday delivery will end for good.
Now the unofficial motto will have to read 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, except of Saturdays and Sundays, because there is no mail on those days.'
Somehow it doesn't have the same ring, but then I'm old school about everything.
