-route 6 to "Comet"-

walking through "Lincoln Park" the people take their time

rubbernecking the same amusements seen time and again.

through years of repetition, its evening path is clear-sky beautiful

on the approach, like a brilliant city rising from the banks of the highway.

whole families pour from their cars, the heavy

hulks of streamlined sheetmetal with fender-skirts and panoramic

windshields, entering the promise of a night's reprieve from their labors

through a portal to where everything is spinning.

see them walking, the women and men with their kids,—

hands from the stern-fishers nets laid and strewn on the piers

of New Bedford, and the sweltering textile mills of Fall River,

from sea-cutting hulls of the "Novis" to the swift-shuttled looms of threaded cotton.

here, women press prizes won by their men, their husbands and boyfriends,

close to the breast; stuffed bears, penguins, and even the platypus is seen!

stuffed animals of near every kind and stiff, pink baby-dolls topped with

nylon wire-blonde hair goo-goo eyed as if in the throes of fear are held with a pride

not displayed in otherwise everyday living;

indescribable items to be cuddled and displayed, items to be wound-up

or shelved, prizes awarded for small victories at the close of a week

that held no saving grace save the necessary envelopes of Friday.

but here is the round and recurring world in motion

where air-guns pop and bells ring-out, where women hold

their spoils and the hands of their 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, still standing

after a direct hit. but man leads the way, weaving through the maze of mirrors

and to be fulfilled each kid must be tall enough, as tall as the mark on the ruler

at the portal of entry in the place where height becomes a solemn

and joyous rite-of-passage, a mark of distinction.

and in the great open-air pavilion people by the hundreds, as now it seems,

feast on bowls of New England clam chowder, slurping the milky broth in a dense

resonance of sound unlike any other sound heard anywhere else in the world.

and the people eat clam-cakes on the move, clam-cakes nearly as heavy as the greased

ball-bearings driving the mechanism round and round with kaleidoscopes playing,

the platform rising up and dropping down spinning the people through the life

of its cycle, the pulse of steam hissing at the piston.