1800 Mass Ave

Friends know that I ended up in Cambridge because my beloved brother moved there from where we grew up; in the land of the saguaro. I was nineteen, and I have called the Boston area home until recently, at 32.

You also know that I am a lover/writer of poems. The one I am adding to this entry is appropriate to this blog since it is in praise of Mass Ave, though the sentiment predates a time where my passion was for the music you will find there.

This poem was written only a couple of months before I moved to Austin. Maybe it can be a little view into my head before I made the leap.
~


1800 Massachusetts Avenue (#23)

Mister Van Growling was a small bear of a man.
Who wore his steps on the sidewalks smooth
From the Starbucks store at Packard’s Corner
To his room overlooking Massachusetts Avenue
In Porter Square- where he read his poems aloud
While standing on a milk crate below ground in the Subway.
Van Growling did not hesitate departing our desert city home.
He would see me disappear from the car’s rear window-
As he escaped my body sank to the ground and wept him farewell.
I followed Growling to Cambridge where he would push me in to snow piles
All along the Avenue, with a sinister howl that was all too familiar.
I visited Van Growling at the building at 1800 Massachusetts Avenue,
Time and time again he would come down the steps
Wearing his brown Carhartt jacket and a smile for his sister.
Do not send mail, my brother, the elusive Van Growling no longer resides here.
I am standing across the way, raising my gaze to his window-
Struggling to keep my body from sinking to the ground, wishing he did still.
He sits atop a hill in Dolores Park; his smile is for San Francisco.
His sister is a New Englander, at least for now-
Tomorrow Massachusetts Avenue waits for us with just fallen snow.