Clotheslines and Stick-Ball - April 19 2023

 

Clotheslines and Stick-Ball

April 19 2023



The dark tenements

and narrow streets.

Congested

with hawkers' stalls

jeek-by-jowl,

kids playing stick-ball,

swayback nags

hauling wooden carts

with second-hand goods.

A welter of clotheslines

are strung between the tenements

like telegraph wires,

carrying the news

by way of stretched long johns

that wash-after-wash

has mostly left threadbare,

dress shirts

with detachable collars.

Old lady lingerie

grey with age,

and baby clothes

saved from the dead.

I look at the old pictures

in black and white

and think how things have changed.

How today's New York City

is bright and airy and clean.

How in Central Park

the grass has greened

under a blue spring sky.

How people play and jog

and take in the sun,

while a jazz trio

is noodling around

with Mingus and Monk.

A chestnut horse trots by,

coat shiny

head high.

It pulls a fairy-tale carriage

with tourists inside

gawking at the scenery.

And taking the tenements' place

   —   thankfully condemned

and long ago demolished  —

is prime real estate.

While the clotheslines are history,

replaced

by fast fashion

and laundromats.

And the kids

who once owned the streets

swiping apples from the cart

when the peddler's back was turned,

or playing stick ball

and trading marbles,

are sitting in airy apartments

glued to colour screens.

As soon as I saw that familiar image, I immediately thought of how quickly and dramatically things have changed; how we take for granted our good fortune in being born when we were; and the intangible things — the social trust and sense of community — we give up as we gain in material wealth.