Route 9 to Harper’s Ferry

[Mark A Becker]

Thanks Ella j-

You are right about the last line and I originally did use "between" instead of "from". The reason I changed to "from" was to maintain the syllabic count at 14 per line.

The only good thing about my OCD is that I'll never kill myself, because I'd never be able to decide on the precise details of how to do it.

To hell with my syllabic compulsion, I'm going back to "between", because that subtle difference is more important than maintaining "a count".

Thanks again,
... Mark

PS-- Now I'll need a 7-step group for poets with obsessive syllabic disorder. I think that 12 steps is 5 too many, and 7 just seems like exactly enough to me.... ;-)


Hey Ray: I used to swim at Black Pond all the time in my well spent youth. My son still goes there. When he says "I'm going to Difficult", I know exactly what he means... Too many people there now for me. In my day, in the early '70s, it was a great skinny dippin spot, esp with that cool jumping off "cliff".

Hi Mark, lovely read, hit all the senses with an extra dose of ecstasy of the moment. Click and clitter was a bit much for me but I guess so is that overwhelming sound on an August evening.

I think I'd prefer the last line as
summer blurs the distance between leaving and arriving.

Thanks for the read.

Funnel Cake

Extraneous VA stuff:

Mark : "I won't mention apples, especially not the BIG RED APPLE at Winchester."
           :'-(           Ha ha  

Mark: "Let's see, 15 miles west of DC, 1/4 mile off of Rt 7-- did you live near Wolf Trap?"

Sort of. The mileages were very approximate. I lived on Millwood Ln. in Great Falls, Virginia.
Difficult Run ran through the tip of my property. Up there it's about 20 feet wide, if that.
The stream had undermined an old sycamore, which fell across the run and made a
convenient bridge to the other side of my property. I used to sit on that sycamore and drop
a fishing line, no poll needed, into the run. I caught white perch, sunfish, and every once in
a while a very small bass. Captain Hickory Run ran into difficult run about 300 yards upstream.
I once thought I caught a brook trout there, but everyone said that was impossible. About a year
later, I happen to ask a Great Falls Park Ranger about it and he said there used to be brook trout
in the small tributaries of Difficult Run. Hopefully they're still there, as I only use barbless hooks
and always thrown them back in.

Yes, truly a wondrous place.

chat:

ha, I imagine that household had to watch for loose hooks tumbling from every pocket into the laundry.
Just took the inland Shenandoah range run, a breeze of a drive, away from the coastal mayhem.

---

Hey Q D-

Like you say, it can be a harrowing experience driving around that area toward twilight and at night.

To me, those minor, menacing touches add very much to the magic of the place.

And that is precisely why the 4th stanza must stay, my friend.

Thanks for reading and commenting,
... Mark

mmm, I go to Harpers Ferry two to three times a summer, went just last weekend. stayed in Antietam... nice place.


as far as this peice, I would consider an edit to stanza 4, as it is a bit too dark for the rest of the light poem.

---

I personally find driving around harpers ferry at night to be a harrowing experience. It's pitch black with narrow roads and no gaurd rails.