Sometimes when pressed by stress we wander around

in old parts of town admiring the grand old homes

and daydreaming about the people who built them,

and those who dwelt in them, and those living there now

or sometimes, on the High Bridge, heading down hill,

To get stuck at a long red light in Lower Town

on my way to the Victorian stretches of Summit hill

I can imagine someone in a carriage, all those years ago

grumbling at the cross traffic, and here we sit waiting

adding our colorful invectives to the catalog of curses

connected with the past, complaining about the moment.