In the Name of Progress, Growth, and Almighty $$$

I think it was a couple of weeks ago I was over Beverly’s, sitting on the back porch when I had this hankering to go see the train tracks beyond the stand of white pines that lines the borders of her backyard. I walked along the tracks for a bit until I reached a clearing that leads to the little river which the train follows into downtown Haverhill. It’s such a different setting than the train tracks, more Huckleberry Finn than a tramp abroad.

Backyard Trinity

Behind their duplex there’s a pair
of train tracks drawn between the dots
of Portland Maine and Boston Mass,
connected twice a day by yachts
of steel through drafts of diesel fuel
sailing their passengers in dual

directions. But behind the tracks
a little river flows with almost no
objective but meandering.
Its hue is more pistachio
than blue and on its surface floats
a white canoe. No other boats

are visible. Beyond that stream
the task force of an interstate
pulsates with loud omnipresent
reverberations from the great
all-knowing Oz, not Kansas-bound
this time, so somewhat more unsound.


Gregory Perry 2004

But beyond the river, the steady droning of the interstate sooner or later invaded my consciousness with its call. There are so few places that are not polluted with noise these days. At least the train only interrupts twice a day with its rumbling earthquakes. The pure quiet of that Acadia day 2 ½ months ago was one holy exception. (Revisions will be posted here.)

Note: revision posted here now 14 hours later.