The Tail Bone of Columbia Road (walk with me, vol. 5)
Below, the fifth installment in my "walk with me" series: a place-based set of story-poems observing and living streets and corners across Boston and Cambridge (scrawled with love).
A gray-pink-brown earthworm scrunches along the sidewalk at 11:05am near the tail bone of Columbia Road, its body easing across segments, oozing over the rain-water-lubricated surface and soaking in the light, still-cloying, late-morning-mist. On the corner, an elder twirls a cane and throws it up, down, sign-tossing, offering his very ability to walk to the gods, flouting purported disability with muscle-memorized agility. months earlier, a car speeds through a red-light to make it onto I-93's on-ramp, warp drive to hyper-speed, nearly takes the shins of a man crossing the street with it, he turns back and mutters, then screams, the first day of the new year nearly the last of his life. months later, boys no older than 13 are interrogated by state police over petty fireworks, hemmed up in the train station, a brief distraction as the commuter rail's bells toll arrival, they take flight like the sparks they'd allegedly let off a few minutes earlier, glide across the pedi-bridge, race the late afternoon light down Columbia Road, peel off into Uphams Corner, unscathed. In the present: a child witness watches, bends to assist the worm, help hasten its journey. though its life may soon pass, the worm quickly contracts from her grasp. the road most traveled still has much to offer along its path.
The rest of the series: