-from route 6-

walking through Lincoln Park

the people take their time
rubbernecking

the same amusements

seen time and again
through years of repetition.

it's beautiful in the evening,
clear sky beautiful,
as if seeing a brilliant city
lit-up from across a river.

incandescent lightbulbs
surrounding
the massed amusements

are approached as they were

a gathering of stars.

whole families empty themselves
from their cars, the heavy

hulks of streamlined metal

with fender-skirts and panoramic

windshields, entering the promise

of a night's reprieve from their labors

walking through a portal to where

everything is spinning, the working

class approaching on a night off.

see them walking then spinning,
the strong and the young
and the weak and weary-looking;
the women and men,—
laborers from the drag-net
laid piers of New Bedford,
from the sweltering textile mills of Fall River,
from the sea-
cutting novi-fishers,
to the swift-
shuttled looms of threaded cotton.

here, the women press prizes
won by their men,
the husbands and boyfriends,
close to their breasts;

stuffed bears,
stuffed penguins,
stuffed animals of near every kind,
stiff, plastic pink baby-dolls
topped with wire-blonde hair,
goo-goo eyed as in the throes of death,

clutched with a pride not displayed
in otherwise everyday life;

indescribable items
to be cuddled and displayed,
items to be wound-up or eaten;
prizes awarded for small victories
at the close of a week that held
no saving grace save the envelope.

but here is the round
and recurring world in motion
where air-guns pop
and bells ring-out,
where women hold their spoils at the breast
and the hands of the men walking
proudly beside them.

at the rails of the midway,
a man's failure to achieve
is regarded as the fault
of the crook inside the booth —
where the ball is accused
of being bigger than the hole —
where the passing duck
must be bolted-down on its track —
but man knows the way,
weaving through the maze of mirrors

and to be fulfilled each kid must be tall enough,
as tall as this mark on the ruler here
or that mark on the pole over there,
in the place where height becomes a solemn
and joyous rite-of-passage, a mark of distinction.

in the great open-air pavilion

people by the hundreds, as now it seems,
feast on paper bowels of New England
clam chowder, slurping the milky broth
in a crowded resonance of sound unlike any other.
and the people eat clam-cakes on the move,
clam-cakes as heavy as stone and as greased

as the drenched ball-bearings

driving the mechanism round and round

with kaleidoscopes playing,
platforms rising up and dropping down
spinning through the life of its cycle,
the pulse of steam relentlessly hissing at the piston.