Worcester, Massachusetts, by Tom Mukasa

Worcester, Massachusetts

The stretch of time,

Marked from all Saints’ to Martin Luther King Day,

The weather like clock-work,

The days previously longer now shortened rations,

A wind that blew,

So cold as if announcing something,

Then flakes as light as downs,

Covered the brown ground as far up and down.

The sun’s rays,

Cut-lasses slicing through trees,

The white piles of snow,

A massive layer of white,

The winds booming,

Loud mumbles in the canopies,

Gnarled twigs and undergrowth,

Held firmly down by rigid roots.

The dark coloured water,

Moves slowly through gullies,

To the brooks and ponds,

Spread around this forested countryside,

Brown fluttering swans,

Beating their wings about,

The sun a flaming globe,

Undecided and lingering over horizons,

The sounds and the purrs,

Of rushing vehicles on the asphalt,

The loud whistle of the traffic lamp,

A white generic human flashes okay,

A sign here and there,

Massa-cue-sets, Worcester seems to whisper,

Life in the City,

Urbane and urban regulated in a pattern.

The shoes make a crunch,

The heavy in-steps leave treads,

Two by two,

A long trail of foot-marks,

Bald hard surfaces,

With white shiny snow pastes,

The cold winds,

An ever poking persistence.