There Had To Be Dark And Muddy

Look At Everything As Though You Are Seeing It For The First Time.

Those Were The Rommely Women: Mary, The Mother, Evy, Sissy, And Katie, Her Daughters, And Francie, Who Would Grow Up To Be A Rommely Woman Even Though Her Name Was Nolan. They Were All Slender, Frail Creatures With Wondering Eyes And Soft Fluttery Voices. But They Were Made Out Of Thin Invisible Steel.

And You Must Tell The Child The Legends I Told You - As My Mother Told Them To Me And Her Mother To Her. You Must Tell The Fairy Tales Of The Old Country. You Must Tell Of Those Not Of The Earth Who Live Forever In The Hearts Of The People.

You Took A Walk On A Sunday Afternoon And Came To A Nice Neighborhood, Very Refined. You Saw A Small One Of These Trees Through The Iron Gate Leading To Someone's Yard And You Knew That Soon That Section Of Brooklyn Would Get To Be A Tenement District. The Tree Knew. It Came There First. Afterwards, Poor Foreigners Seeped In And The Quiet Old Brownstone Houses Were Hacked Up Into Flats, Feather Beds Were Pushed Out On The Window Sills To Air And The Tree Of Heaven Flourished. That Was The Kind Of Tree It Was. It Liked Poor People.

Oh, I Wish I Was Young Again When Everything Seemed So Wonderful!