Among my Substack subscriptions is Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Studies newsletter, which I like because it’s something completely different from what I do here. She has a regular “Friday Thread” feature to which subscribers are invited to contribute, and this week it had to do with favorite streets. This was an easy one for me: It’s the street in Taunton, Massachusetts, on which I grew up. While writing my comment I remembered that years ago I wrote a poem about Madison Street and its environs; here it is. I claim for “But Now We Have Cable” no great poetic merit but it’s one of those things that I’m glad I wrote.
But Now We Have Cable
When I was ten these streets were crooked still, And I could have walked them with my eyes closed From corner to corner. I knew every house Along the streets, and who lived in them too, And that the old man who sat on the stoop Of the small house across the street from ours Had soldiered in France with Black Jack Pershing, And didn’t like kids. I knew the trace of the territory Behind the houses—the lots and thickets— The places where the fences had been gapped— The triangle of fallen logs I called A fort—which trees were easiest to climb— And where a fire might be safely laid. I knew the paths between the broad back yards, And all the shortcuts. I knew the way to the sluggish river Where bottles did duty for battleships, Shattering under my salvos of stones. I knew the way across the wooden dam Into the sad patch of forest beyond The railroad tracks on which I laid my ear In passing to listen for a train that might Flatten a penny. I knew where high white ramparts would be heaped By the muscular plows. From those bastions I would snowball passing trucks from ambush. I knew where the pond ice would be rotten On the first of March, and how to cross it At a dead run, with the wind in my face, Over the deep, over the low stone wall, To the fields beyond. Now there’s a superstore where that field was, And the bastards have straightened all the streets.