Poems by Aileen Bassis
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Turnpike Pastorale
by Aileen Bassis
Aileen lives in Jersey City on the west side of New York Bay, a river estuary where sea gulls perch in the supermarket parking lot, and a forest grows on an abandoned railroad embankment.
East, the highway loops, divides
traffic into a fitful stream
of blinking brake lights,
that scatter randomly
over ramps, onto a cloverleaf, profuse
as mayflies.
Across a western spur,
smokestacks dimly frame
a smear of trucks,
where a swamp fills with wind
moving thickened water
past switch grass and cattails.
Southward, a litter of warehouses
and factories roil. The highway
widens with lanes and north
tosses a luckless handful
of once promising
cities, crowned with exhaust
clouds edged green
as oil film floating
on New York Bay.
© Aileen Bassis