Fort Hill Poem by Robert Dawson

FORT HILL

Dogs
mammaldom's Boston Irish

rant from porches. Park
hoodlums

glitter at us
like battered letter knives

and the white
washed monument

built
when my friend's greatgranddad who said

"I spit upon the people" was boss
in Boston - squat

lighthouse jammed up through a doghouse
-- at least at some time since

has been
a public privy. Not

even that use mars
its now lovely

disrelation. Across
where the walls of a half-bulldozed tenement bloom

Puerto Rican reds and golds,
an accordion

solo whines
Rocco and His Brothers.

Uncut yellow
ragweed wet

with bottle glass
hides ruggedly distinct

little boy / little girl games.
My above

mentioned friend
and I sway on the one green slat

of a bench, chat-
ting, having

never found (in slight sight through mist
of the new Prudential megalith

on Washington Heights)
anyone

each the like
of the other.