Sightlines
I was making my way in to work, sitting on the old electric bus as it jerked and sang it's high hummed song, glancing out of scratched and cracked windows when I started noticing roofs. More exactly my eyes held the lines made by roofs as they slid down slate gray and maroon tiles picking up speed until they stop short. Then peering over a fine line of gutter, straight as an arrow, perfect channel, water duct, catcher of house tears; I jump to the next apogee.
Now we are moving faster and this is not the duplicitous development of Suburbia, this is the organic growth of near city, close held in the arms of Boston's streets, not yet stoned or bricked, but doubled and tripled, huddled close for warmth and indifference.
The lines reappeared. The lines of shingles, some sweepy and curved on old mansard frames, lines of raised eyebrow dormer windows, lines around gables and then my eyes move on to the next. Transverse and transfixing Peter Pan like on the hat of the house, pulled down tight around slatted clapboard ears, with chimney feathers and some with a flat top; domiciled crew cut. And always, always, ending at that straight margin, border between above and below (in and out.)
We stop and I see a child under the porch roof waiting for the school bus. Jerked out of my sight he is held lozenge on the tongue of the doormat.
And on and on the lines took me. Unflinching clarity in their work. Unending purpose in their design. Straight to the tunnel and into the office building where I sit curving ideas into straight lines, indenting and updating, paraphrasing and rasping until I can take the Red Line home.
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