by Jeff Hamilton

“Tropical depression forms” is a suggestive forecast.

At the gym and on a stair master, I’m not trying to climb anything.

Walking nearer to home, I music, musicking I hear lines not the music’s –

Mellancamp’s “this land fed a nation” wears better as “this land-fettered nation.”

Lance Loud told the filmmakers Allen and Susan Raymond in 1983:

“I feel at home within the vernacular of real time, the time you guys create.”

Visiting the house when my folks went gone away, I was asked to “Secure the perimeter.”

Or ignore whether some ex-IBMer had delivered to the front door a cooler of steaks.

Forced from the house, onto the streets, sometimes too late.

Jeff Hamilton lives in St. Louis and teaches at Washington University.

*Photo courtesy of selectcuts.