three from ROAD TRIPS

BREAKING BREAD WITH A STRANGER 

During large gatherings,

I always dined alone in my room
And savored the meal.

There were no distractions:
No loud arguments
No political debates
No family photos to view
And no fake smiles or phony laughs through 

Which to suffer.

There was no vacuous noise in my left ear.
The uncles worried about Aunt Ruth, who was 

Taking a break from Bingo, every cousin thinking 

She might fall asleep at the wheel. 

Those were the days when at midnight
I would rest on the patio hammock
And look up at the night sky and imagine
The holiday dinners that would roll out into my future. 

Decades later, on a snowy Sunday,
I walked to Bickford’s and sat at the counter
All alone in the back.
My company was an old book
I picked up at the Strand:
The Secret of the Old Clock.

There was unexpected solace in
The visual rerun.
A man sat down near to me
And he soon dined on beef stew.
He looked weary and he carried
On his shoulders the weight of stone blocks.
I moved closer to him
As if the closeness would attach me to an unfamiliar comfort: 

A sweet zone that was strange yet oddly made me feel secure. 

THE EMPTY PARK

You returned in the still quiet to 

Dyker Beach Park and sat in the 

Glare of broad daylight 

Under the old night street light.

You lost parts of yourself as I did 

When moments tumbled away 

When so many of us went away.

That was the place where the 

Chipped pieces of our button candy 

Melted into washed swirls of abstract art …

Where yesterday’s bumpy seesaw,

Broken now, points to a tired and 

Rusty jungle gym where you chased me

As if catching me would be a brass ring. 

The benches where the old grandmas sat

And gossiped about the cuckold

Are empty now and dirty snow has

Collected on the path where strollers

Stood at attention waiting to be pushed 

All the way home.

You returned for seven days:

As if sitting shiva would

Give you sweet solace and comfort 

And bring you closer to 

Something that once was. 

WHAT GROUNDS A TOWN

This town is painted with detailed brushstrokes

Within graphics that visually trickle by.

Drivers on the main street and 

Passengers on the outskirts 

Of these tangled streets 

Forget what passed in the rear view mirror.

Later, maybe: the drivers and the passengers

Go to the drive-in to see comedies. 

While at the same time, 

Past times are always painfully 

Remembered by victims and visitors 

In the core, and they are not laughing. 

Riders on trains pass stone walls where 

On the other side black and white silent films 

Once played on screens and now scraps 

Of old newspapers from years 

Gone by are reminders of layered agonies 

That spill hopelessly to the lakes.

After one defined breath, walkers pause 

In this town to stare at that place 

And remain in place to share curious glimpses.

I myself stopped there one rainy night when deep 

Melancholy drove me to drive, to drive in all ways 

I could creep and through all paths my imagination 

Could crawl, so I could think and make sense 

Of the whole senseless. 

And when I stopped on State Street

I inhaled and with one whiff 

The total of all the layered misery 

From all different harsh sides was inside me. 

Strangers in other towns never knew of the 

Solid prison next to railroad tracks where the mournful 

Sounds of trains passing was a constant reminder

Of the past in which a life could have advanced

Along a different and less wrongful path

Leading to different ends. 

Locals always whispered of inmates filled with 

Despair who died inside that place and many still wait 

For the ages inside that place so they too 

Can die and reach the end of the line.

I thought of the lonely men who lived in solitary 

Confinement and live in a bleak prison next 

To railroad tracks where mournful sounds

Of trains passing filled and fill the air.

Hopeless inmates waited to die and still wait

For rightful justice to be served: 

An eye for an eye, 

Served up plain and simple.

Long after I left that place I heard for many 

Nights, in my small city apartment and while alone 

In own my bed, the sad faraway sounds of trains 

Passing as they carried innocent riders to other places 

And probably some measure of happiness… 

In full blown living Technicolor.

On a rainy cold day, 

I was disturbed when the wind blew

The curtains in and by the haunted and haunting

Sound of the blinds rattling. 

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020