VACATIONING IN (OLD) UNION SQUARE
We are huddled in a doorway near a shop called
'Abe's Electric'. There isn't much here other than
debris. The old reviewing stand in Union Square Park
is deserted now, the papers and brown bags blowing around
seem the only crowd. The bend in the road right here seems
awesome to me. No one is speaking. All is quiet and dull.
-
Once there were labor crowds here cheering - in the old
'organizing' days of the movement. Rallies galore.
Once the cluttered noise of speeches and support ran
through the crowds like the electric lines overhead, pushing
forth the yellow arc lights by which we tried to read. The
voices were strange and singular, with bullhorns or cupped hands
amplified - and then only much later the powered megaphones
from atop ancient cars. It was a funny world back then.
-
So many so sure of their cause.
So often so ready to stand for so much.
Has the world changed greatly, or us?
-
It seems now that nothing but a vegetable mart grows here.
People mill about, huddled and rash, for squash or wine or
custom-made jams. The small farms from upstate have their very
own pies, fruits and meat. Has our ideology gone crazy?
Shunted aside from their DDT and pesticide scares, the tenuous
connection these people make between Freedom and its 'choice'
of foods is strange to me. What have we become? And how have
we reached the milestone of choosing to act, over food
and its styles or grapes and their taste? Dorothy Day no
longer walks among this crowd - to my knowledge she has
long been gone. Perhaps some other land has called her there,
wherein she bravely calls out for the hungry and their needs....
-
'I will feed you, give you warmth, and offer you a better
shelter than you will find huddled here, in Union Square.'
We are huddled in a doorway near a shop called
'Abe's Electric'. There isn't much here other than
debris. The old reviewing stand in Union Square Park
is deserted now, the papers and brown bags blowing around
seem the only crowd. The bend in the road right here seems
awesome to me. No one is speaking. All is quiet and dull.
-
Once there were labor crowds here cheering - in the old
'organizing' days of the movement. Rallies galore.
Once the cluttered noise of speeches and support ran
through the crowds like the electric lines overhead, pushing
forth the yellow arc lights by which we tried to read. The
voices were strange and singular, with bullhorns or cupped hands
amplified - and then only much later the powered megaphones
from atop ancient cars. It was a funny world back then.
-
So many so sure of their cause.
So often so ready to stand for so much.
Has the world changed greatly, or us?
-
It seems now that nothing but a vegetable mart grows here.
People mill about, huddled and rash, for squash or wine or
custom-made jams. The small farms from upstate have their very
own pies, fruits and meat. Has our ideology gone crazy?
Shunted aside from their DDT and pesticide scares, the tenuous
connection these people make between Freedom and its 'choice'
of foods is strange to me. What have we become? And how have
we reached the milestone of choosing to act, over food
and its styles or grapes and their taste? Dorothy Day no
longer walks among this crowd - to my knowledge she has
long been gone. Perhaps some other land has called her there,
wherein she bravely calls out for the hungry and their needs....
-
'I will feed you, give you warmth, and offer you a better
shelter than you will find huddled here, in Union Square.'
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