Saturday Poetry (on Sunday): Prospect Park II

Okay, I know it's Sunday but I have an excuse.  I was here in my office minding my own business yesterday evening coming to the conclusion that I couldn't blame the temperature for my Elderly-Italian-Widow-In-Support-Hose feet.  The weather's been lovely, n'est-ce pas?  No, it's drugs -- the usage of 2 new ones to control my ever spiralling blood pressure since I can't do it myself through my usual Ironclad Discipline (a joke that).  I went back and read the fine print, the "contraindications" (whatever the hell that means) and wouldn't you know that for some people these drugs cause a person's extremities to swell (check) and make the skin sensitive (check).

I'm middle-aged now so not as blithe about personal health as I once was.  Monday I will dutifully call to make an appointment with my internist.  He will tell me what I already know:  stop takin' em and go back to the other pill.  The one that costs 3 times as much.  And you know I will.

New Haven has been much in the news lately -- much of the coverage unflattering and some of it richly deserved.  But, statistics and news reporting can be "wrong" while being factually correct.  The coverage creates an impression that too many parties take a perverse pride in, i.e, that New Haven is this gun-saturated town, this 'hood that's getting off the hook.  And so you have 2 choices and 2 choices only  -- die young or move to the suburbs.  If we keep thinking this way we will keep holding "Stop the Violence" rallies that are temporarily cathartic but ultimately meaningless.  (See arguments against conducting a War on Terror.)  Gun violence is not a monolith and it's not a being.  It, in and of itself can't be stopped.  The economic, statutory, social and psychological conditions which foster this level of violence can be changed but that takes shrewd and courageous political alliance-building and cooperation, it takes targeted economic and development strategies, and it takes the tenacity of the Red Army during The Long March.

I'll end with poetry:

Prospect Park II

That afternoon trip to the Park

was an outing offered

because I berated my daughters

for being too young.

We walked through the meadow

happy to split in two.

Me to smoke and scowl in my Ray-Ban's,

They to prowl among the families,

looking for love, and complaining about

the one they hated all day.

As usual, the men were teamed for soccer.

Some young, some old,

one thin and vain with a severed arm.

He carried a comb in his only hand

and between plays ran it

through his hair which was thin,

like my cigarette.

And I asked myself was he dying, too,

or only full of regret?

When I joined my girls at the far end

they were ready to love.

We wandered until we could go no further

and chose a path that led into the trees

where my shades hastened me

an early dusk,

but not so much that I missed

the men staring at us.

We, a bitter woman and her spawn,

had trespassed their cruising ground.

The men's caroming eyes

begged us to leave.

Holding their hands

I led my daughters forward

into those woods, until winded,

I found a hole in the fence.

Safe on Flatbush I bought ice cream,

a bribe for forgetting, and talked of

all the pretty flowers in the Park,

and weren't we lucky to find

that hole in the fence

so close to the ice cream truck?

Where an incoming hunter started

when he met this chastened flock.

A ewe and her lambs escaping

as he entered to fuck.