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Author: Anne Cassidy

Cul-de-Sac

Cul-de-Sac

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One of the features I’ve observed through the years about the suburban landscape is the great number of cul-de-sacs. Everyone wants to live on one, I suppose. So I included them in my poem.

No longer “dead ends.”

Now they are cul-de-sacs.

“Bottom of bag,” a Catalan phrase, I learn, via French to English.

Their modern use: to calm traffic.

But what happens to traffic calmed? It bursts loose on the straightaway.

Meanwhile, the lone woman rides her bike to the circle,

round and round she goes.

She has lost count of the years.

Old House

Old House

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Write about a neighborhood, the assignment said. At first I didn’t want to write about ours. It’s the suburbs, after all, that which confounds and conflicts me. So I considered Idle Hour in Lexington, where I lived from age 3 to 10. Or the High Line in Manhattan, neighborhood of the air.

After several false starts, I decided to go small, became a miniaturist, to look at our house, street and subdivision from a number of different angles.

Something like this:

–>

We want an older home, we told the realtor,
who showed us spanking new split-levels
instead of colonials with history and creaky stairs.
It was newish when we bought it,
but we’ve owned this place 22 years.
The windows leak,
the basement is full.
We found our old house.
Community of Voters

Community of Voters

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Virginia was only one of four states to hold legislative elections yesterday, and when I reached the elementary school that serves as a polling place, an ethereal pale moon was rising in the sky.

Because there were no national races, experts predicted a low turnout. It was anything but the case in our precinct; I had to wait in line even to use a paper ballot. (For the first time ever, I wrote in a candidate’s name — for the soil and water conservation board!) And polling officials said it was a steady stream of voters all day.

From a glance at this morning’s paper, it’s not clear whether our candidates won. What matters more is seeing how many people vote. I said hello to neighbors I hadn’t seen in months.

I don’t want to romanticize this too much. But sometimes on election day our precinct feels like a village, with small-town manners and courtesies and generosities. I wonder if, in different circumstances, on a different scale, we might be like this every day — a true community.

Autumn Walk

Autumn Walk

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It was late coming, but the last few days of autumn have fulfilled their promise with splashes of last-minute color, with that trademark smell of crushed leaves and with the sound of motors — leaf blowers, chainsaws, lawn mowers.

From its shivery beginning to its balmy conclusion, yesterday was designed to show off what’s left of the reds and yellows and those translucent pinky oranges that always stand out in the woods.

I took my camera out for a walk and it got more exercise than I did. Every few paces I was snapping shots again.

I’m glad to have this record of my stroll. And glad, too, to have these brilliant days of fall before winter makes us monochrome once more.

Timepiece

Timepiece

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Full disclosure here: My daughter Claire suggested this post. I emailed her Saturday night to remind her to “fall back.” She’s a busy college student; I thought she might forget.

Here’s what she wrote back: “I think all my clocks turned themselves back. You should blog about that. Now clocks turn themselves back. Computers, phones, you know.”

She’s onto something, I think. Not just that the ritual of “falling back,” that satisfying stoppage of time, is more often accomplished by a distant satellite these days. But also about the digital divide. Look at the wrists of young people; you won’t see many watches. I wonder, too, how many clocks they’re buying. My guess is precious few. When time is always in the palm of your hand, why display it on a wall?

The very concept of a timepiece, of a device whose only purpose is to tell time, is going the way of the slide rule. As a watch-wearer, cuckoo-clock owner and occasional Luddite, I find something to lament about that.

One Hour

One Hour

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Today, thanks to our springtime sacrifice, we receive an extra hour — the gift of time. It’s still early enough in the day that I can contemplate how to spend it:

Sixty more minutes to read the Sunday paper? Two walks today instead of one? An extra-long phone call with friend or family? Cleaning the fridge? Snapping photos of autumn gold? Reading and writing? Putting the garden to bed? Making beef stew? Practicing “Sheep May Safely Graze” on the piano?

Or, how the day is starting to shape up: Letting the dog out, letting the dog in; letting the dog out, letting the dog in.

Has a certain mantraesque quality to it, no?

Permission

Permission

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A cloudy morning grants permission. Not that one needs it, of course. We are all grownups here (well, almost). We go out or stay in as we are moved to do.

Still, a cloudy morning says, no need to venture out just yet. You will miss nothing by sitting here just a moment longer with the laptop, tapping a few more words onto the screen, reading another passage, closing the book and pondering a phrase.

A cloudy morning diffuses the light. No rays blare from the east. No shadows fall. The clouds are democratic; they spread light evenly across the land.

There is something in the work-worn soul that craves a cloudy Friday morning. It is a long sigh, a pause, a resting place.

Place under Assault

Place under Assault

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Last night in class we talked about how place is being challenged by globalization, population growth, global warming and other challenges. When places must compete for resources they have to sell themselves. They are essentially in competition with each other.

On the surface that would seem beneficial to places, because it would prompt them to sharpen their competitive edges and make them more attractive. But what makes places more attractive, the marketplace says, are jobs, commerce and convenience. The marketplace is not very good at recognizing, creating and delivering the ineffable something that makes, say, San Francisco, San Francisco. And why should it be? What makes certain places sing out to us is far more than the sum of their parts.

So when places have to compete for jobs or big box stores, they sell an image of themselves. I’ve seen this happen with Lexington, which pushes itself as the “horse capital” even as racetracks are dying and horse farms struggling to make it. Once the real place is gone, it resurrects itself as a carriacture.

The real placeness of a place can only bubble up from below. It can’t be superficially imposed from above. End of sermon!

Water and the Bridge

Water and the Bridge

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As I learn more about the land around me, I find myself gawking out car windows, craning my neck as I cross bridges, counting houses after I pass a hidden lane.

Is that where the old road veers off into the woods? Is this where, as late as 1970, cars forged the creek?

I’m testing the waters here, seeing if history can stand in for that bone-deep knowledge of a place that comes from growing up there. My hunch is that it won’t; my hope is that it will.

For doesn’t this, like so many conundrums (conundra?) depend upon whether you listen to head or heart? You can make a list of pros and cons, but in the end your rational self is taking orders from that fast-moving water down below.

Our thoughts are the bridge; our feelings are the water.

I put my money on the water.

Quick Change Artist

Quick Change Artist

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It took a glimpse of winter to scare us into fall. Oh, I know the chemical explanation. Or the lay version of it. Leaves need a shock of cold air in order to change color.

But look at it another way: The trees still clothed in summer green, shivering in the snow, telling themselves, this isn’t working. We need to strip down, and fast.

Overnight, we have autumn. The trees I know, the dependably flashy ones, have burst into yellow and orange. The air smells both acrid and sweet. And on a hurried walk, I spot an artful arrangement of crimson maple leaves snagged in a net of spent clematis. I relax my shoulders and move on.