Loss In and Around Old Town - with audio

audio link

As I left Old Town,
I climbed the hills and winding ways,
Then up the airport escalator, and
Finally, through a wall of sound into
The sky. All the while I kept my tears in
A pocket close to my heart. Rings
Within rings and circles upon circles.

It had begun this time with a phone call
Late at night: "Our loved one is dead"
Came those broken hollow words. I didn't
Hear the rest right away. Many, many years
Had passed without my becoming very
Close to this one. I reached into the vault
Of my beating inner chambers and
Began to spend tears one by one, and
Then many as I lay silently in my bed.

Like a rock breaking through the
Surface of liquid reflection,
So the flying behemoth catapulted me back
To the fertile place of the past;
Barreling through time and space
To the hearth and home of before.
Once the light had shown brightly there
But now it seemed to have dimmed.
The wind barely dared to whisper
About the life there once so full
Of Passion and desire, that now had
Faded in the hard water of time,
Like a yellowed newspaper
Long forgotten beneath the fallen leaves.

The moon passed from behind the
Curtain and the dream began again.
I was inserted into my alter ego of
Timeless past; in the city and
Relationships of my youth.
For a brief trickle of time
The magic of the distant glowing one
Played the tides of my soul.
What once was, came again,
although changed, as we all drifted
Along, a little further downstream
Toward the oceans of the coming past

Different this time, yet also the same.
What had troubled me those many years ago
When I had left Old Town,
Rose up again to haunt my thoughts,
And assault my sensibilities.
The chiseled out class-ism
And the clash of the blue collar mentality
With the changing society at large.
The utter corruption of local government,
The misappropriation of public funds.
The condescending attitude
Of small minded prosperity
In the imagined high places
Of some backwater country club.
Throughout the highs and lows
Of each cloistered group,
Generation upon generation remained
Awash and soaked in ornamental drink.
Progeny were sprinkled in a fanfare of substances
While alcohol dictated the lives of the many.
Together with the threat of violence,
Like fraternal twins, they existed side by side
As lonely paths in a futile effort toward
The solving of life's riddles, of relating
To self, others and the world at large.

Excitement had been driven out by slumber
And in the eyes of many the spark
That had once flared, now only flickered.
Once again the world turned the clock
And the wheels of the car turned to
Find the way back to the warmth of
My boyhood home, there the old gears
Of my family were turning.
Death had done what life could not.
Death and resurrection had brought
Our family back together in one place.
For the first time, I could
Connect the dots and view
Those patches of the tapestry,
Left now to our care,
That had once been our loved one's life.

The possibility of death's reality had
Broken in upon my consciousness
Years earlier when my family's best
Friend had passed away and broken
Our hearts.
Now here it was again
A bell tolled in silent dark resonance.
Yet our loved one gave
Once again in death.
It was the gift of meeting with and
Knowing many more of the colorful
Charming members of our clan.
The gravity of this family constellation
Had pulled many friendships into it's orbit,
And together they lit up the black night
With the beauty of their shining brightness.
The tangential power of their world
Had brought me back
Within Old Town's hills
To rebuild that which had been broken.
They had shown me
Another way home.
It seemed that even as one world
Was slipping away
Another one was being created.
How blessed I felt to be shown
The way home once more.

Lines interlocking and strings intertwined,
The thread went through the needle and
Into the eye of the storm.
Then the rain came,
Raindrops from every heart,
Teardrops from the sky.
A cold wind also blew,
But death and destruction
Could have no power over
The dawning spring and
The resurrection of those who have left us.
So the Robins and Cardinals
Announced the season of life.
While the roses put on their best
Show of colors and sweet breath.

Old Town was like an Elisa Dolittle
Scraping out existence
In the flower market,
Or a Cockney sweep,
Amused, sooty, staggering, tipsy.
The sights, sounds and smell
Of the oxygen rich air
Remained as beautiful and pleasant
As when I was a little boy
First experiencing them.
The famed pollution of the
Industrial past had given way
To the tidy quaintness of
A New England College town
Joined together by myriad bridges
Leading to old Gothic Cathedrals,
Giant historic Synagogues
Granite Civil war Monuments,
Vast Cemeteries of the 1700s,
Victorian homes, legends and
Turn of the century mansions
Lining hilly cobblestone streets.
Each perched upon little embankments
Bragging of the grand and storied past,
Involving Vanderbilt, Mellon and Carnegie,
Universities, museums, statues, schools,
Parks, observatories and climbing steel.
All clustered among the ivy, flowers, shrubbery and
The neighborhood of make believe.
The maple trees fresh and dripping sap,
Spinning off their propeller like seeds,
The Sycamores with spiked seed-balls falling,
Dusty leaves and peeling bark, 
The naked Birch, many fruit trees and
Woods, green enough to make a
Leprechaun smile and an Irishman sing.
Robins, Mockingbirds, and Cardinals
Calling out their continuous song.
Rabbits, deer, and pheasants playing in
The plush land outlined and divided
By rivers, Valleys and hills
Into cities, townships and boroughs.

But life in the West needed nurturing.
Family, like magma bubbling up through
Some fracture deep within the granite
Of the here and now.
So it was that my life in Old Town
Should remain only in short dreams,
As the schism of my East West
Lives could not be reconciled.
The waves of life in the West
Called for the freedom to inundate
And I needed to embrace it
For all that was good and right.
I awakened once again In the house of the setting sun
So the spell was broken,
The dream was over,
The world had changed,
Turned and moved on.
I left the time machine for a coffee
Mixed with memories of the past.