1900

new day
new year
new decade
New York
no, thanks
Chicago
ja, besser
stockyard cattle
slaughter murder
meet me in St. Louis
four years from now
picnic in Central Park
(how does the Other Half live?)
Gibson Girls
everywhere I go
men with bowler hats
natty three-piece suits
august
Horseless Carriages
very few
summertime
walks down shady country lanes
rides in interurban rail cars
sunshine warms my body
color instead of
black and white
cool Victorian beach scene
adults laugh
children play
maybe one of them
my great-great grandfather or mother

somewhere on a hot green prairie
a Native American chief
squats dejectedly
in front of his tipi
"they will move us all
into a reservation to-morrow
in a faraway horizon"
is the Great Spirit dead,
nothing more
than a wisp of fog
in the night?
no
keep dancing
and singing the Ghost Song
it will never leave,
it will never
say goodbye
to you

what?
go?
now?
no way
I still want to kiss
that pretty-haired maiden
on a Mississippi riverboat
and the both of us
to be fram'd by the sunset
the Nymphs like Sirens
call my name
over and over
from among the tall reeds
at the lakeshore
you go
on ahead
I'll meet you
at the edge of Time
I want to stay here
for a while

a long while



DB/c1991,2015