5794. TAKING LIBERTIES

TAKING LIBERTIES

I once actually knew a girl named Liberty, long

ago lost and gone. She'd been born on the Fourth

of July and that's what her parents named her. Yes,

a real firecracker she was. It never dawned on her

that the name meant anything. I think she had a 

brother named Freedom, but I could be wrong.

-

Now, it's everything all over and different again  -  

so I'll tell you the story of Now. This is how I see

it. Sitting in a defenestrated dive-bar down on the

harbor-bottom street called Fish House Road.

The old woods around here  -   when there were 

woods  -  were all a forest of beautiful Cypress

trees. Long ago they were a gift from Japan to

the people of Jersey City or Kearney, or whatever

this hell-hole is called. Some low-speckled end of

the Jersey Meadows. It's nothing now but roadways 

and truck bays and warehouses. The sort of place they

dump dead bodies when that's convenient or necessary.

No one says a word  -  the trees are long gone, the 

pavement's taken everything over. It seems to grow as

quickly here as the weeds on that hill above Hoboken.

Over time, the land dried out too  -  from all the paving 

and roads and new drainiage pipes, and that was the 

death knell for the moisture-happy cypresses.

-

Where was I? Liberty and Freedom. Yeah, they lived along

here, along with some of my friends  -  a real cartilage crew,

rowboats and small fishing in the shit-infested waters of

Newark Bay and the Hackensack River. My one friend used

to say  -  living in the very last house at the end of some road

that led to the water (where he kept a boat tied) that people

would drive up in the half dark, back up to the water, flip open

the trunk and just throw stuff in. he'd go out the next morning,

just to see what was dumped, if it was still there; and he said

'you wouldn't never believe the shit I seen  -  people'd throw

everything you can imagine in there, and I mean everything.'

-

'I guess that the pursuit of happiness', I said, thinking of Liberty

and Freedom alike/. They never talked, or, leastways, I never

asked them what they thought about these situations. Had I

her here now with me, I sure as hell would. 'Liberty', I'd say,

'Liberty, now what do you think of all that?'