Balto. City

Baltimore breaks between land and sea, north and south, union and secession, black and white.  Crowded old streets beneath glass corporate towers whose only shield is raw power.  Empty rubble streets of the weak whose windows are shielded by plywood.  The city sanitation truck that gases by is branded "Balto.City", saving untold dollars in extra lettering.  I walk the brick streets and brick sidewalks past the brick row houses of the Otterbein neighborhood between Conway and Henrietta streets and Charles and Sharp streets, below the convention center and the federal reserve bank.  My downcast eyes trace the patterns in the bricks.  Then my visual field is flooded with color—magnolia petals fallen everywhere.  Rooted in a buried past and longing to rise toward a brighter future, Baltimore becomes, in my mind, the ancient Chinese symbol of the rooted tree, reaching up as it clutches the earth.

© 2010 John Clay