here's what it's like: let's say that you have just had
lunch someplace in Collegetown and you are
on your way to Karl Jaentsch's garage with
your VW because yesterday
you noticed the brakes were beginning to fade
you start down Buffalo Stret hill it
looks like rain now after a sunny morning:
when you slow down for the blinking yellow
light at Stewart Avenue those brakes are
not good
and it get's worse that huge old green
house on the corner of Fountain Place and
then the shiny face of Terrace Hill apartments
flash by you likie the past you feel terror
in your wrists your stomach and you know
those brakes are gone and you won't be able
to stop at the red light on Aurora
where there are several people leisurely
crossing your path: maybe on their way from
the Unitarian Church to Hal's
Delicatessen or they just left their
own apartment to go buy some flowers
or whatever erronds we do all day -
in any case there they are and you can't stop
so this is what it's like: as if your brakes
had failed and you couldn't avoid running
right through that crowd knocking them all apart -
panic broken limbs and screams in the street
well the chances are that on any
given day at least one of those people
would be somebody you had quarreled with
last year and hadn't spoken to since or
a friend you had visited only last week
or even the person you were once married to yourself
who would see just before the impact that it was you
that's what it's like living in Ithaca
photo by Kathy Morris
poem by Dick Lourie
1978
Buffalo Street Hill, 2009
Marge declaims verse as Nate drums:
Love, David & Nate
