Carol Derby
NOW AND THEN I stood at the corner of Spring and 6th. The intersection at an impasse. A flatbed unloaded pipe; hard hats assembled scaffolding. Commuters climbed out of the ground. The light turned and each began to weave his or her way and then one, a woman, alongside an eighteen-wheeler, reached out and steadied it like giving notice to a nervous beast with a touch to its flank - her hand went to the metal above the wheel wells, below the hood, as if she trusted tons of steel would yield like a team of oxen to the flat of her hand as if she carried some old way of life within her. Or as if, in that moment, the light shifted and she found herself in one shaft among cattle that once came this way to drink from a nearby spring. Buried, it floods basements now and then.
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