Copy of A Lyric, A Story, No.2

“I am a ticket taker, many tickets have I torn” – The Low Anthem

The ticket takers count the men who can afford the ark

It’s the new ferry, from the Islands steaming north. Started for the tourists but now there are no excursions, only the rich and poor islanders who have given up all to take wing and flee.

Four years of bad weather at harvest time, two elected governments that came and went at the same time the wind took all the fields into the air and away from the farmers. All the tax dollars pilfered out of the country into New York real estate. Too little food and no money to buy it. A shadow government of the gangs, collapsing community and recruiting the young. And the Coup.

The ferry is the last gasp, the quintessence hope, the refuge of the refugees. Crowded in like the crates of limes, papayas, banana peppers that used to ship to northern cities of smog, families jam in anywhere and everywhere, sitting on their duffels, their knapsacks, their cheap suitcases, their Gucci reminders of good times. Sitting on them to prevent the petty thieves. Sitting on them because it’s the last thing they carried through the door. Sitting on their grief to keep it intact. It feels like thousands of tearful fugitives have streamed up the gangplank, each claiming the square foot needed for a human being to huddle into a ball.

But I’m not getting off in the North. I turn around and steam back. My job is not to stream down the gangplank and disappear into the city, to melt under the barb wire through the border station. My job is to struggle through the crowd, asking for the ticket of hope and punching it, asking for the ticket of grief and perforating it, asking for the ticket to pierce.

Sorry I missed the Sunday Posting. We were recovering from the Saving Grace concert.