Earth Day Story

I remember the dusty floorboards of wood in the streetcar

Of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company

And the varnished yellow banquettes of tight-knit rattan

Worn smooth by decades of passengers

The worn gleaming brass grips at the corners of the seats

And the motorman’s little bell

Windows trembling in their casings as we crossed the avenue

Liberty dimes falling softly into the steel-rimmed hour glass

The gnarled hand of the motorman near.

My grandmother arranged herself against the seat

Her back as straight as a soldier’s beside me

Her navy hat with velvet band

And net veil down making her head seem distant,

Her dreaming smile and the patient Roman nose,

A repose so deep; from my place

I watched her when we rode like princes

Rattling past traffic stopped on the granite cobbles

Riding downtown together, my hands in hers;

All that so much

That I love yet but feel no sadness for, that

Time crossed out like the trolley tracks taken up

Or entombed under the pliant blacktop of the modernized.

Source: The Thread (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)