by Mark Fischweicher
upstate
in the woods,
In a wilderness
of brambles
at one particular location
there is an old stone wall,
now homeless
but still in place,
that rises just where it stood,
one or two feet above the ground,
a corner, left in place
from someone’s former life
and periodically there are remnants,
one or sometimes
two boulders high,
of some old stone boundary,
stretching for yards
all matted and covered with bright
green moss
separating someone’s former world,
from their old forgotten neighbor’s
within this murky sea of stones
a border, a margin
a man-made fringe,
like water circling an island
an inlet.
as it was over a century ago,
in 1896
in the city
when the Harlem Ship Canal was built
allowing ships to move
between the Hudson and the Harlem Rivers,
when Marble Hill, now part of the Bronx,
became an island
still afloat despite its tons of
Tuckahoe Marble
nearly pure white in color
quarried and carried down
the Harlem Railroad,
to Saint Patrick’s, where
the clustered columns of the nave,
the choir, and the transept are all
of white marble.
those of the nave, of extraordinary dimensions,
striking the sight with a sense of colossal grandeur
which words will not convey
but I am bound to it.
these are my woods
my trails, my paths,
my streets through nature’s rude
forgetfulness.
Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.