Okay Hal, now you've done it...top of what's left of my head early in
the morning. I wanted to call it "Jersey Rain" but Pinsky got there
first. Nothing's finished.
SOAKED
I have a picture in my house that I took one afternoon,
digital colors turned to black-and-white to fit the mood,
of cars streaming down the avenue in a rainstorm, headlights on,
the day count of rain forgotten, only knowledge it seemed endless.
Our clammers go out each morning, piece-workers, bushel-paid,
but even they won't go out in this because, anti-American as it sounds,
they believe one's life is sometimes worth more than market price,
so the Luccheses who run the plant will have to skim that day from
someplace else.
No one forgets on the Jersey Shore the two clammers who died in Raritan
Bay,
went out in the worst of winter needle air-ice because they needed the
money
and drowned 100 yards offshore, onlookers horrified and helpless:
their bodies, ID'd by their clothes alone, weren't recovered until
the spring thaw.
We are famous for our bigtime disasters like the Hindenburg,
the Lindbergh baby, the Morro Castle afire off Asbury Park:
but every day there are the minihorrors of winter days--
the 15-year-old raised by a drunken single father who leaves
her newborn baby in a plastic bag on the bayshore beach.
I run through my head Impressionistic paintings of rainy days,
reflections of carriages and people, but I cannot feel the soaking
chill.
They are Pretty As A Picture.
KTW/11-17-03
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
