-September 17-

“I have discovered that most of

 the beauties of travel are due to

 the strange hours we keep to see them:

 the domes of the Church of

 the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken

 against a smokey dawn—the heart stirred—

 are beautiful as Saint Peters

 approached after years of anticipation.”

1.

Thus begins the Suite to “January Morning”

By William Carlos Williams.

I reach for a pack of cigarettes
Somewhere in the middle of it
Gone missing now for near 30 years
Justifying myself to myself that

My element is back there with the best of them

And it’s pure as Weehawken.

Nothing I've ever lived with sounded like Weehawken.

But the walls of the water tanks rose above
The beauty of the neighborhood.

Once, from the top of the hill
As high as I could pedal,

I watched them being primed
In the same pea-green as the entry's plaster

And below the hill steeply downgraded,
With me straddling the cherry-red Schwinn,
With the painting men tethered high
To the walls of the tanks,
The river ran to the ocean without a thought
To what it was doing to itself

And although I didn't know it,
From the highways beyond the river
Running southward like the water
One could get to Weehawken.

2.
This morning, during a digital recital from the stage
Of another in a long line of college readings,
Mr. Williams recites his poem "Spring and All"
And in Closing, he said to those in attendance:

"By the road to the contagious hospital..."
Ridiculous!
How is that in a poem? Well,—
It is."