Commentary
There is a field across the way
Where dandelions bloom in May.
Like Flanders field, where hopes fly
And dreams too often come to die,
The flowers dot the field like fleets
Once upon a time on this Island that has managed to achieve peaceful coexistence without traffic lights, we had a little hoedown at the four-way stop on the Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Road. Cars would come down Barnes Road from the airport. Cars would come up Barnes Road from Featherstone. Cars would come from the high school. Cars would come from Cash & Carry. To cross the four-way intersection, it was a fairly basic doh-see-doh — first come, first served.
April was a cruel month for black people in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. So was May, and the months that followed, culminating in the explosion of a bomb in a church that September that killed four girls. Fifty years ago last week, on May 2, 1963, teenagers and children, some as young as six, marched in Birmingham to protest segregation. Many were arrested for parading without a permit, but the marchers came back the next day. They were viciously knocked down in the streets by torrents of water from fire hoses wielded by white policemen, were hit with batons or set upon by police dogs.
‘’Mom, can we….
way mih
Mom, this isn’t…
way mih
I don’t want ….
way mih
Wow, look at this….
waay miih
He won’t give me…
way mih…
way mih!’’
the way of
misgivings
the way of
minerva
the way of
minnie mouse
the way of the
minutiae of
tending to.
the mih
of the minutes has gone
the kids are no longer waiting
(there were, after all,
four of them).
time to fold my long,
trailing mantle
of harried motherhood,
plump it into a cushion
A friend’s son recently started playing Little League and my friend was philosophically relaying the fact that his son was playing right field. There was disappointment in his voice. I said that I had heard over the years right field had actually become less the place to hide a poor player and more the place to put a kid with a strong arm, a la Roberto Clemente. I’m not sure where I had heard this.
I’m old and don’t like change. I’ve balked, moaned and resented the roundabout going in right up the road. But I’m a sentimental fool. I’m nostalgic for the blinker light, the old blinker light, with red on two sides. The one I used to speed through on the way back from parties.
Why be nostalgic for long gone places?