RSS SPIRIT

Roaring trolley rolls past ancient graveyard.
A heat fantastic and wet, a fork in the road
down which track melts into a forgotten concrete
valley. There true torpor lies, and also a
pharmacy college.

One could take this fork less traveled time and again
until one would find a minor paradise albeit ghost haunted.
Are there ghosts in the graveyard? Of course one hears stories,
but all that is verified are beautiful corpse fed azaleas and ferocious
dogs at dusk.
Stay away from the dogs, locals know.

The trollies arrive from multi-pronged forks and combine on one track.
Three routes merge at the cement flatbed trolley depot, all eastbound
cars then enter into what the drivers call 'the hole.'
This is where to get a car late night
when love hunting or seeking emergency temporary shelter.

Chester Avenue sports the old brick sidewalk on the graveyard side.
It frequently floods, but provides an archaic walk under hanging trees.
The VA hospital to the east breaks the bucholic spell. A stern brick building,
rusty metal warnings, sad men in worn coats, kids with missing limbs
and smoking doctors.

Where Chester meets 38th Street they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
Not the worst thing actually, paradise is not suited for this bit.
It is more a humble hub where various traffic veins converge.
Disconcerting, pedestrian unfriendly, traffic criss-crosses to the college,
the hospitals, the interstate.

There is a nice hidden nature reserve, walk straight east, past
where Chester T-s against 38th Street. If you have not been run over
yet by autos of various decrepitude.

This patch of Chester Avenue gives it up anciently, urbanely.
It is decadent in its deshabille.
Urban urchins run you down in cars, heavy boxes squeal past.
Westbound down Chester Avenue at the fork is wild and uncharted,
forest and ghetto alternately.
The true and rare pioneer spirit might try it, but most should
get their trolley fare together and
ride into the hole of mystery.