I
Seated between two hills
north & south
sleeping at appropriate times –
mostly free
from its wetland past –
capturing dew points along
North Church Street
on stubborn crabgrass
urgently marking the jagged joining
of ancient slate slabs
all strangely formed
in strakes
processing to welcome travelers at
its ambiguous center.
We moved with attentiveness
across those wedged stones,
shifting over epochs
crooked & precarious,
markers for the habitual
stroller & child handlebar-gripper
whose body memory could marshal
phantom steps & pulsed clenches
striding or riding safely to church,
the meat market or toy store.
But visitors beware.
Peopled early by workmen
cleaning catch basins before newly
car-driving villagers crisscrossed the
madly formed square;
converging streets
wrapping buildings closely
across from the sunken park of green
that softens the stark facade of steepled
limestone history.
Harriman Square,
a magical singularity
bereft of organizing traffic lights
& marked by its solid white bullseye;
an unreachable point but
forming the statuary base for our
beloved sentry Chief Walker,
erect, white-gloved & spit-shined
half-smiling, arms & hands
slicing the air
with mechanical precision
bright eyed; his peppered police whistle
bringing pitched order to chaos
while his august form draws
every housewife's gaze.
II
Outsized & punching upward,
holding a county seat, posing questions
about appearances & the oddness of
Rio Grande creek channeled & directed
out of sight in subterranean solitude
a sluice
quietly moving under our feet
but peek-a-booing at grade
near the end of Canal Street
where young boys who made plans
to build a light raft & pilot through
its dark tunnel
were at last repelled by the stench of sewage
from the leaky history of busy pipes;
hidden, rusting capillaries
offering quiet witness
to organic hushed humanness
elderly & unattended, discharging slop
while above ground tattooed
seasonal horsemen chattered
on the corner of Main
& monied gents passed by,
acting as if no one were there.
Courtesy ruled the dissimilar habitués
flinging curiosity aside with directed attention –
horse grooms at their bars,
dairy farmers at the hardware store –
no time to stop & eat,
lawyers & bankers at Howell’s Luncheonette,
policemen strolling past the Occidental Hotel
silently keeping order while scheduled train stops
announced themselves & cars halted
for the arm-folding railroad signal;
an opportunity for happenstance & short
conversation.
The indifferent tracks formed rhythm & geometry
& stretching along Green Street,
home to black villagers,
connected two sides of town
hosting both border & exchange
for melanin mixing
or tentative greetings;
a coupling geography offering
glimpses forward & from its
proud purlieu
the mirth of gentleman John Bruen,
black & brilliant, The Ole Hasher
who knew those tracks –
man of prose & wisdom,
dapper, handsome, pen in pocket
offering chat as he gathered thoughts
for the next newspaper scribbles,
local & universal, our brass tacks
village sage.
III
Revenants loiter
at this lowland crossroad
pressing immortality
where the French Canadian horse groom
smiled at the gum-snapping waitress
& others, stomach-ulcered & drunken,
stumbled across Greenwich Avenue
to flophouse quarters,
fugacious & filled with wraiths from
knife-fight pasts,
murmuring unknown entreaties.
Through history-filled senses
listeners might hear,
between the metered jolts of
that oversized diaphone
fire horn,
youngsters arguing about trotters & pacers
and who is held champ –
knee-raising Greyhound or
well-hobbled Dan Patch, imagining
a showdown of equine gods.
“What if Stanley Dancer
could have driven old Greyhound too?”
Dispassionate doppelgängers at work,
evenly matched & giving open track
to trotting & pacing kings,
letting the aged, pounded clay decide.
And across town a knowing horseman’s ear
could discern
the dissonant rhythms of
left-side hoofs to right-side hoofs
changing forward position & pelting the track
against the syncopated & symmetrical
alternations of an old grey stud.
What if & what about;
so full of remnant recesses
in its ghostly décor, is Goshen.
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Kevin Swanwick works in the software technology industry and resides in the Hudson Valley of New York with his wife Kathy, two daughters and their dog Dante. Kevin has returned to poetry after a long separation. His published short fiction and essays can be found at The Strange Recital podcast and Elephant Journal.
The poem Goshen arises from the firsthand experience of a 12-year old horse groom’s assistant at the Historic Track of harness racing in Goshen, NY and the interpretive memory of a middle-aged man. Their reunions occur in poetry.
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