David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Nike on High (New England Trail Haibun)

High on an escarpment just south of Pinnacle Rock, in a place seemingly without boundaries, I find a long stretch of rusted and vine tangled chain link fence topped with barbed wire. A network of macadam paths cracked by tree roots and obscured with leaf litter lead to a cluster of concrete pads where buildings once sat. Chunks of broken masonry, corroded pieces of pipe and angle iron, and other metal fragments are scattered among the leaves.

During the Cold War, Nike was here and watching, always watching and ready for Soviet bombers. In low cement block buildings young soldiers, their faces radiant with the glow of radar screens, scanned the sky around the clock. Hunkered down in bunkers, wired on coffee, they waited patiently for the moment when the inevitable would meet the unavoidable. Just below the cliff were hidden magazines where an order from above would launch warhead-loaded missiles whose explosions could sound the beginning of the end.

High military security has surrendered to the oaks and tangles of brush. Given time, nature swallows our abandoned hopes and fears. The trail jogs memory with a few accidental monuments for those who are watching, carefully watching. Even the space-age leaves ghosts.

eve of destruction
fearsome missiles shaped by fear
nature heals the scar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Haibun is a marriage of prose and haiku.  It was first practiced by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who perfected the form in a journal he kept on a trip to the remote regions of northern Japan. Gary Snyder, James Merrill, and Jack Kerouac are among American interpreters of the genre.  Haibun best expresses the spirit of the New England Trail because it combines clear-eyed prose descriptions of people, objects and places along with poetry that awakens the imagination.)

The New England National Scenic Trail, a unit of the National Park Service, runs 215 miles from Guilford, Connecticut to the Massachusetts/ New Hampshire border.  The trail is maintained by volunteers of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association in Connecticut and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Massachusetts.  For more go to https://newenglandtrail.org/

 

Beautiful Manhole Covers

Manhole covers are beautiful! If you don’t think so, you haven’t looked. Beneath our feet and tires, they tend to be beneath our notice. But many have geometrically pleasing, if not intricate designs. Take a walk in any urban and many suburban areas with a focus on the street and you’ll find art where you never expected. Just watch out for traffic.

Manhole covers are typically round caps that seal a man-sized entry to underground infrastructure so that the pipes and wires beneath the pavement can be examined and repaired. Round covers are most common since the shape prevents the lid from falling back into the hole. But manholes may be rectangular or square as well. Although they are too small to allow a person entry, the term manhole is also often used to describe openings to gas and traffic control structures.

Sumac in Winter (poem)

Branched like a crazy candelabra
supporting crimson flame-shaped fruits,
staghorn sumac burns for months
but is not consumed. Conical bunches
of berries make snow whiter, sky richer.
On the year’s altar, sacred
to the ceremony of the seasons,
they’re memorial lights for the last day,
birthday candles for the first.
Growing at field edges and in waste
places, most of us don’t notice the ruby glow.
Bluebirds, robins, and squirrels
know better, plucking at the jeweled lights
to keep their own fires burning.