Back in Brooklyn
Back in Brooklyn after 3500 miles across the country of my birth. I barely recognize it anymore after 4 years in New York City: long, rolling hills with trees of many-colored leaves. Rickety fences lining old dirt roads. Back-country rest stops with rusted gray ‘FOOD’ signs and ghost-town alleys with emaciated old tire frames & trailer hitches strewn across them. Good, plain people moving in slow motion against the roaring rapids of modern civilization in SUVs and semi trucks racing down I-80.
I’m glad to be back in Brooklyn, where I feel activated. The quiet plains of Nebraska and the cornfields of Iowa stretch across my mind even as the screeching breaks of a B44 bus echo outside my window. It reminds me that I’ve always lived in between the comforting spaces that others gravitate towards. And when I look at them from the outside, I pull myself inside and wrap their realities around me for a short time. But before long, this gypsy is slipping out onto the road again under the cover of night.
