going places

I have never been to most of the places I have seen

Remembered scenes like snapshots in a dream

Perhaps in a movie or some painting or photograph

Commingled memories wandering my inner world.

Going to a new place looking around taking photographs

Framing landscape images as if projected from within

I point and shoot rapidly recognizing compositions

Capturing iconic views when I don’t think twice.

Some places are familiar to millions of people

Like the cityscape streets and buildings of New York

Shown as the backdrop in so many screen dramas

Happening in the same space so many of us traverse.

The production crews were an aggravation to me

Parking their trailers bumper to bumper blocking streets

When I was a delivery driver needing to get on the block

I once yelled at Woody Allen walking past on the Bowery.

Those days I imagined being able to travel to other homelands

Visiting the countries of the immigrants I met on my route

Enjoying the diversity experienced in a world city

Swimming in the sea of people living our lives together.

Now I have time and the means to go around the world

I find so much to see and do so close to my doorstep

Where I have everything I need or want in this life

The trips I might take another day glimmer on the horizon.

I travel around in my memories

To times and places that have flown past

Effortlessly getting there like teleportation

The most pleasant way to travel.

Mill Creek Marsh July 31, 2016

album

Kittitinny Valley to Paulinskill WMA July 30, 2016

album

July, 2016

The sun rising on another hot summer day

Stirring the chorus of cicadas in the trees

Calling out their invitation to procreation

A signal to us to seek out the shade.

Now is the peak proliferation time for insects

The butterflies dancing random patterns in the meadow

The dragonflies as predators patrolling the pond

The fireflies at dusk flashing silent streaks.

Now the bird calls fade out as their nests are empty again

Song sparrow notes one, two, three then trill diminishing

Wood thrush flute notes and rattle rarely sounding forth

Catbirds, mockingbirds and cardinals most often heard.

The heat wave continues in the hottest month

In the hottest year on record every month so far

While the ruling political parties convene their candidates

Leaving us to choose between catastrophe and disaster.

The electric grid strung across the forest of curbside poles

So necessary to modern life with air conditioned relief

Buzzes as if there are cicadas trapped in the wires

Impatient to transform the capitalist system.

The neofascist versus the neoliberal response to the crisis

Policies that put private profit ahead of human needs

The inexorable dead end for the people of the world

A social revolution the obvious solution so difficult to do.

And yet when I imagine the future the outcome is certain

How else can the sweep of human history be told

No matter that the current weight of inertia seems intractable

What was before is no more and what is now will be gone.