Walnut Hill Park, in New Britain, Conn.
“All that is left of landscape lies at the bottom
of a sea of summer air; the town is drowned
under that sky, remote above the building
that in the picture scarcely clear the ground.’’
— From “The Prospect Before Us,’’ by Constance Carrier (1908-1991), Connecticut-based poet and high school teacher, most notably of Latin. This poem is based on the view from Walnut Hill Park, in New Britain, Conn., the old manufacturing city where she taught for years.
Lafayette Street in Salem, Mass., in 1910: an example of the '‘high-tunnelled effects'‘ of American elms over streets and a scene once common in New England — until Dutch elm disease killed most of these lovely plants in the mid-20th Century.
“Here where the elm trees were
is only empty air.
Where once they stood
How blunt the buildings are!
Where the trees were,
sky itself has fled
far overhead.’’
From “Elegy,’’ by Constance Carrier (1908-1991), a Connecticut poet and teacher
