he vied backanforth backan
forth zigzagged
maybe hed twist one up
which way to go whichway does he
go ahNope no no nopenope nope which way whichway does he go
he was irritated
as preface to his quandary
he lived in a part of a community called The
Colony it is the original neighbourhood built
near public buildings and a mall after the town was founded chartered
he knew that through the
historical society
he didnt however call it The
Colony those who did were a little too
haughty for his tastes and they took a particularly delight and pride in calling
it so somehow making them feel separate and better
Kahrist
living there he discovered that
there were more than a few
it appearedhe laughed to himself he
went from the pan into the fire albeit
the pan was twothousands miles east
to be fair it took years and had been a convoluted path
he lived in Chicago proper until he
was five then moved and spent his boyhood and teens in the suburbs Hazelwood being suburbia streetsigns told you when you went from one city to the
next one wasnt different than another they were like run-on sentences zero punctuation
his folks still lived there
his siblings lived within ten
minutes of themwithin twenty minutes of each other
The mailman takes exception to
your letters his folks told him in turn he adored their redundancy
Why
You upset him, he doesn’t find you
funny.
Im not
An I aint writing him he knew exactly why the postman had
a bug up his ass Since I usean I seem to be the only one who does the nine-number zip I could probably drop Exxon-Valdez Illnoise
and by your street address an zip youd still get it
He’s not amused, Joe.
Maw I could give a shit Im amusing myself
Ya tell him for me Do your job Can you do that
Joseph, he’s a nice man.
Then tell the nice man Quit editorialising Yacan remind him anwhy I remember this is
beyond me Neither snow nor rain nor heat
nor gloom of an oil spill stays these couriers from the swift completion of
their appointed rounds He might recognise the bastardised creed
The Colony like Hazelwood was anti-Semitic
Twentyfive thousand population fortyplus church no temples synagogues
mosques blacks few and far between anbecause its Califormia it has to suffer
Mexicans
who else to do their yardwork
it late in high school when he
realised his crewcut mistakenly identified him as a skinhead he grew his hair
out
Kahrist
out of the pan and into the fire
he was white
he was straight
he would have fit right in if his
politics werent his politics or if he didnt know history
he refused to let his children
participate in Thanksgiving programs at school Go along to get along his wife her family his distant family members
counselled him a concerted effort he hadnt asked them his children werent participating he ended up going before the school board it refused to acknowledge that Wampanoag were
two to one to the pilgrims anif it had not been for the First People the pilgrims
might likely have perished he resisted
the temptation to standfist raised over his head and chant Remember Roanoke
Remember the Lost Colony Remember Roanoke
he testified Ive always been of the mind that the red man in their parlance they werent going
to correct him which he would have bet
the farm on should either have packed the
pilgrims back on board the Mayflower returned
it from whence it came or killed them
the Board slackjawedincredulous was
visibly peeved
he capped off his remarks
Sixteennineteen the year prior to the Mayflowers landing another
vessel The White Lion arrived Its
heinous cargo was twenty to thirty black Angolan slaves
Maybe we should celebrate The White Lion not
the Mayflower not the pilgrims not their obviouslycherished lives which helped make the founding and formation of America our
country built on the backsthe bodies of slaves The pilgrims fled religious persecution sought out religious freedom in
the New World But whakind of freedom is that which enslaves people
their silence said it all
he couldnt resist
Ya donknow what Im
talking about do ya Yare the School
Board Might wanna look it up My girls should be taught history not
mythology unless the mythology is
defined as such
that was only part of his
conundrum
he had to movewas displaced
he rented a house in The Colony after his children graduated schoolwent
to college were making lives of their own
tragically his wife died
since he arrived there seemed to
be or else it was
just him a concerted effort to take down
trees and when trees were cut down they
were not replaced with saplings
he was particular about trees
as a boy a youth military academy
was shuttered in Exxon Valdez and the land company that acquired the property
published in the local newspaper that anyone who wanted a tree or trees --
there had been an arbor a tree nursery the cadets worked -- could come onto the
premises and take them a sixty day
window was provided
on the first day a Saturday he
and his father took the stationwagon over and dugup four trees to plant on the
hellstrip and in their yard on Sunday
they dugup another four two each for two
neighbours
his father had what he wanted so thereafter he persisted on his own initiative and walked over to
the grounds pulling his wagon behind him and removing two trees at a time he divvied them among other neighbours he approached who were happy to have a free tree or trees
he didnt count how many trees he
saved
he wept outside the gate on the
sixtyfirst day when earthmovers cleared the remaining grove piled them snappedbroken violated green wood
in the past year amid havoc wrecked by Trump virus he worked from home more and more of his Colony neighbours bought
dogs who bayed and chorused throughout the day
he was not fond of dogs
he had cats
but wasnt it unusual it seemed so to him
that after hundreds of trees were felled that a hundred dogs he didnt know
would be brought into the neighbourhood
it seemed counterintuitive
but maybe not
not if the Colony was
as special as many of it thought it was
he was irritated
vexed
0205, Monday,
19 4. 21
1203, Day-between-Two-Ts, 21 4. 21
Sting It’s Probably Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FsKmmD_NV8
