Love in the City



Me at the Cathedral in Baltimore, @ 1967



Life in the Cities


Oh, scenes and tales of the cities

I have had the honor to live in

the last few days brought memories

treasures, adventures, people holy or maybe sin


Growing up in a provincial Eastern Shore town

the sandy touch of the Choptank bank

and the crops of all the farms around

filled the fear as gas fills the tank


It seems small town and farming folk

felt the city was a negative resort

where all kinds of ideas, buildings

and people of different race disport


Yes I found that what they said

had a solemn clang of distrust and truth

for indeed it was a busy place indeed

packed with all the said forsooth


Yet what a wholesome adventure it became

to learn the people of different ideas and grace

embroidered the beautiful tapestry with colors

of the rainbow of the flowering human race


The jobs I had working first for the Sunpapers

in the hallowed city of my home state

leaving to become a commercial artist

there also unknowing began to comtemplate


Just what it was that would make me

who I am, teasing out the country child

found that love often became a confusion

of religious thought that told that I was wild


But from that came a lovely child

a story that I’d love to tell, yet I ran away

to that learned city of Boston, MA

like Baltimore also on a beloved bay


1

But let me stay away from personal tales

so personal that could be written in weeks

for the cities also offered friends and ideas

employed with variety of backgrounds life did reek


so bountiful and varied from skyscrapers

to neighborhoods that seemed like little towns

so filled with such music box of humanity

singing songs, of angels and of clowns


The cities were not just magical in good

there were indeed confrontations with bad

often in places that revolved, like day and night

sometimes stabbing with fear, yet sometimes glad


Education became a daily light, opening the book

a book of learning and of life, with humankind

and in the stories read and heard, kisses and hugs

always always opening up your heart, soul and mind


How I would love to vividly show you

the streets of bold, loud or so so quiet

that filled the hours in apartment homes

of food to fit a somber or a fancy diet


For city life was indeed a banquet

from Baltimore to Boston, Pittsburgh, Newburyport

all became home as we are now, in a small city town

Discoveries that abundant friends give, of every sort!


Do not give city living that silly finger

or sass it with your mind and lashing tongue

for it is as round and beautiful as our globe

a song that must always gleefully be sung!


💗 🌎 💗


©James M. Frase-White 1 May 2025



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