not hitting the ground

slow splatter of raindrops
on leaves in adjacent garden
—plum, pear, walnut, cherry
jack-o-lantern, dill, fennel—
in grey dawn before hand-pulled
bells cast time over senta town

it will be late evening here
a continent and ocean away
from time and place of my birth
slow train whistles across roads
framing corn and fields of grain
tobacco, beets and sunflowers

no sister singing in my ear
i expect no telephone calls
from family i’m so far from
on this mark of another year
and no north atlantic lobster
before me on the dinner table

        —Joe Blades © 2006

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I should have written something before now . . . I’ve been very slow at blogging of late. I’ve been tired, exhausted . . . overstressed by overwork. Right now could be late night writing after the Taproom and everything except the 24-hour Diplomat restaurant has closed but it’s not. Here it is real morning. Already in the second hour of the normal workday. Not that I’m, at this moment, working.

Already it’s seven days, a week, since I saw Fredericton in person for the last time this year. I have photographs from the air of departure. Photos of friends and the things we do. Photos of places and events.

Already, I have several hundred photos from the air travel Fredericton-Montréal-München-Budapest and south by minivan to Senta, Serbia. [I want to post photos soon as I’m on something better than this intermittent, self-disconnecting dial-up.]

Senta is a small town on the banks of the river Tisa. Surrounded by active agricultural land, there’s grain silos with a flour mill, animal feeds factory, tobacco curing—but not cigarette m(anu)f(acturin)g as the Japanese owners don’t (yet) have the licence to make—sugar (beet) refinery, and more.

There are intercity buses and some local "dayliner-style" passenger trains (not recommended) but no public transit. There's onlt three taxis in Senta. There’s no airport, university or college, no malls or power shopping centre, no big box stores. Life here is definitely at a slower pace than Fredericton.

T-shirt: Alaska [humpback whales]
loc: diningroom table
temp:
sound: rain on leaves; Kiara, the male dalmation