Ocean Wanderer

When you exit the city, much of the traffic is funneled north on an arterial that glides through part of an old warehouse district.  The buildings that remain are immense, red brick and Medina sandstone structures that once held freighted supplies destined for greatness as machinery, foundation, or framework for a city that did not sleep.  Archways large enough for a loaded cart pulled by draft horses are now fettered shut, infilled tight with masonry, the stone voussoirs and imposts blinded by courses of more red brick.  The lake freighters, ironworks, and railroad lines that came after filled this port city to the brim with over a half million people by 1950.  Changes have lessened the population by half.

But the buildings stand, some with ghosts of ads painted on walls, some with small businesses; few are maintained well.  They shoulder next to each other blocking the sun as it rises in the east, dark behemoths silent and cluttered, as confused as dray horses without wagons, wondering what happened to reason.  Along the curb run the city trees, all less than fifteen years old, with minor, sterile landscaping dotting trimmed grass.  This is the route to the connecting expressway, the drivers shadowed by the tonnage of red brick gnomons.  Today, I saw Hawaii.

It was on the back of a bus, an image of white sand leading into ocean ebb tide.  No waves, but the photo was of the thinnest layer of aqua water eternally running forward over the packed sand in shallow, terraced formation, a single, upward bent palm tree to the left of center.  I slowed the car down in order to stay behind the bus, so I could look towards the edge of the pictured horizon where ultramarine blue sky blended to phthalocyanine blue water, for that is the point where everything else disappears.

Whinnying problems evaporated into the memories of my feet being lapped by salt water, as tiny sand chimneys from breathing clams opened beneath receding wavelets.  The air cleared from offshore breezes, beached ark shells strew themselves randomly amid strands of cast ashore seaweed, miniature crabs with Japanese carapaces played orchestral clacking musics.  I was thinner.  There were shrimp for dinner, with a nice white wine.  Then the traffic light turned green, the bus snorted a deep heave forward, and the palm treed postcard turned right, heading up Genesee Street.

It was a long day spent in the space of two minutes, and worth every second.  I forget how much ocean water revives, and sometimes think I should move in that direction, if only to Massachusetts.  My gills need to be dusted off and submerged, saltily.  I cracked open a can of clam chowder for supper: not a coincidence.

Tonight the sky is layered by remnants of rain clouds, you can sense the lowered ceiling for it closes the air a bit, making it thicker, moister.  The red brick warehouses are locked for the night, darkened spaces mark where windows once shone with industry.  It would not be farfetched to see them move ponderously out, in search of a city that could use their protective exoskeletal selves, a long line of elephantine rectangular beasts, nosing slowly in hope, trailing broken brick crumbles.

And do you have somewhere to belong?  Is there a moment in time, a memory that pulls you out of the day, and into a waking dream?  There may be more than one place, one person, who holds your world together surreptitiously, cloaked by years, or maybe you haven't found where or who yet.  You will.  I can tell.  Sleep on it, tuck in, roll over rover.  Splash through dreamtime, slip through years.  Goodnight.