The Level of Town

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina

An early attempt at a sestina, just to give me some focus for writing. I left off the tercet, because rules are made to be broken. This poem is about Reston Town Center, and was written about five years after it was first built.

The Level of Town

The uniform trees along Market Street
Border to the edge of an ancient wood
Where walnuts and acorns once kept sleeting
Skies posted from the quick death of fall,
Where red-backed squirrels were once pregnant shoppers
For December’s hunger and January’s vacant fill.

Under rain one thinks more of fish markets filled
With ice stands and awnings over wetted streets-
Not these specialty shops for specialty shoppers.
One sees wharf and shipping, grained wood
Chopping blocks and men marking packages with the fall
Of scales- not these smiles, this social sleet.

This February, over hotel and office, real sleet
Gripped the towers like a white taffy filling
Until rust-edged horns began to fall
And they closed frightened Market Street.
They tried to pass the smashed pots and cracked wood,
While only stone broken art sold in gallery shops.

Now, heat and foul wet pushes summer shops
To sell iced coffee in tumblers fogged to sleet,
Pregnant squirrels and frogs cut from drift-wood.
Bored marketers empty shelf and rack to fill
Windows, or send coupon girls into the burning street.
Girls to push limp tickets for sales this fall.

For weeks, quick headed jack-hammers lift and fall
Along the weight of cars and waiting shops.
Tar and brick has worn sleepy thin on this street
From years of eastern traffic and winter sleet.
Mask faced crews squat and graveled holes fill
With their cement and sinew, burnt-rock and heart-wood.

And always. Always, on the edge, the deciduous wood
Bows waiting, fire orange in fall,
In spring, city block and forest fill
With tokens, some food for their pregnant shoppers.
City and forest humble each year with drooping sleet-
The wood a wood, the street a battered two-way street.

------------------

Of course, the wood is gone now- it is condos and high rise towers. It will be woods again one day.

Steve's new blog

Weird thoughts: http://cottonplanet.blogspot.com/

For the fourth, for Steve

Ok, beer, illegal fireworks and Nelson just don't work quite like one might expect.

After a day of cleaning house and packing for the beach, we went off to Matt and Pam's for a Fourth celebration. It was a wonderfully green event in their back garden- tents and bunting and too many deserts for the number of people. We've had rain most days the last week, and the grass looked and smelled like ripe cucumbers. Their pumpkins, squash and peppers are coming in fast, like all of ours are around town.

We had a lovely cook out only interrupted by one downpour, which just led to all the men moving vast canopies over the grills and watching the rain and smoke collect dangerously under it. And, of course, a rain storm and the general wetness of the week, gave me free license to go to my care for firecrackers, shooting fountains and a pack of 40 rockets that were never my intention to buy. While passing through South Carolina, as required by man-law, I had to purchase a friend $40 worth of illegal fireworks and did so for myself, of course. With the very judicious purchase of only exploding fountains and firecrackers, the ancient man behind the counter of the freeway store informed me that I had bought enough to get a very large package of highly explosive projectiles- imagine bottle something about 5 times the size of a bottle rocket and about 10 times as erratic in it's flight path. Oh, and they don't just pop at the end. Some explode. Some shower sparks. Some shoot off parachutes. A few, I think, will take down small aircraft.

Thank goodness I had been so careful in my personal choices. Thank goodness I was dumb enough to take these to Matt's house for the fourth, where we could set them off in a crowded back yard with about 40 people milling about.

Now, a few things about Nelson (ne Robbie, aka splodie pants, Rob, Nels, hey you): 1) he very much enjoys fireworks; 2) he loves to say (no, shout) the word 'illegal'; 3) he absolutely loves to shout 'illegal fireworks everybody!!' as he watches his dad shoot rockets onto Matt's neighbors' roofs while the neighbors are there drinking beer and saying things like 'I think that's headed toward my roof'.

But please, I had not meant to buy these rockets. Honestly. They were my 'bonus' for buying my friend fireworks (thanks Steve, and I did give you some, just not the ground to air ones). But beer prevails. And there is no peer pressure for a 40 year old man quite like the peer pressure of 7 year old boys shouting "awesome!! Do it AGAIN!!" So, really, when it comes to it, I had little choice.

Into the wine glass goes this fat pen sized (like an executive pen- a real fat one) rocket. I snap a match. Fizzzz... run.. whishhhh. "Cool! AWESOME!" SMACKPOPBANG. "whoah, that one went off low." Another in... fizz ... oh, run! whishh pop! oh, weird, that went off low. "Dad! I felt something hit me!" "Quite now, want another? Are we done?" "No, Dad, that was awesome! COOL!"

Fizzzzz... oh, run! BAM! "oh, that went only ten feet. Oh well." FIZZZZ run! wissssssssssssh. "Wow! That's like 200 feet!" "Where'd it go dad?" "Beats me..."

Greigor: " I think that went toward my pool"
Dad: "well, that's better than the roof"

WHISSSSSSSH BAM!

"Oh! was that supposed to do that?"

BAM!

I only made it through half the pack, but you get the idea. We wrapped up about the time I had one go up 20 feet, pop and come right back to the crowd. Luckily the one older fella there got out in time. While Nelson yelled again about how illegal this was I went over and apologized to our local Circuit court judge and explained as to how I was probably done for the evening. He agreed it was about time to go watch the town fireworks from a safe distance.