Omnibus 1965 Poem
Who could ever forget?
Riding all night on that half-empty Greyhound,
waking in the alone notime darkness of Nebraska
waking to the smell of gristmill corn, being filled,
mistaking, in half-sleep, the scent of being in love again…
Traveling other roads, 1972
I find my child gets half-fares
As, gingerly, my wife and I walk him
In the silver-green grass of still another
wind-churned state.
or, picking out Salinger’s Nine Stories
in the terminal in Chicago, devouring the book
understanding little but riding it home anyway.
That’s what it was like, being seventeen in 1965.
The passions do not change,
stones sweeping chaos into maelstrom,
ever-pressing eddies:
To know
To find love
To be free
David Stone is a New York City writer whose most recent published titles are 21 Poems and Lucky To Have Her, a novel.
The Line That Didn’t Land
We’ll listen to you right after we’re done not listening to you.
I stood in the back of Good Shepherd Chapel on the evening of April 15, 2026, at the Steam Plant Demolition Town Hall, watching people adjust scarves and jackets before the meeting began. Benjamin Jones, President and CEO of RIOC, thanked us for attending and, without a pause, said he was “pleased to host tonight’s town hall on the city’s demolition of its steam plant.” The demolition, in other words, was not up for discussion.
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