By fate, flaw or fancy, I make my home on an incline in the rocky soil of New York; land where tone and dialect change on a dime. From the tortured ‘o’ of a Brooklyn coffee to the unbearable nasal of the Buffalo twang buried deeply in snow and on to the flat sound of Rochester brushed even and irritating by open fields, hunters and the power of the Genesee flowing North for goodness sake!
I sing the true laborer out on the greasy roads, brunted up against frost bitten winds and the line man graciously allowing me time to read at home; to read of distant shores, for I am a true dreamer.
By hour and genetics I remember Daddy polishing my scuffed Mary Janes on a Saturday night for church; polishing in the cold. The lineman strings lines and props up broken and bent poles and slugs down coffee and salty Beef on Weck as Daddy polishes back and forth, first with a cloth, then with a stiffened bristle brush and I sit on the couch and watch and dream of heated shores and other lives somewhere else.
I am living on the incline of rocky soil, far from the roots of my soul…
690 Saint Paul 