Not the Nearby Commons

Not The Nearby Commons

This Sunday morning in October
a dense fog has settled over Boston
like gray gauze damp with ether,
eased to the breathing of the ill.
I make my way by foot to Cambridge Street,
and I see the street people,
a white man, a black woman,
making love on a concrete mattress
under a tattered gray blanket,
barely moving as I pass yet making love
as if nothing else matters,
not the nearby Common of Lowell’s “…Union Dead”
nor the cascading chimes of Park Street Church
drifting through the mist to Granary Burying Ground,
jarring the bones of Revere, Hancock, Adams,
flaking the slate gravestones
with the rhythmic, invisible chisel
of the hymn.


Larry D. Thomas


Previously published in The Curbside Review.
Posted over on Lilylit Review