Laying a glove on Seekonk

 

Photo and comment by WILLIAM MORGAN

 

The Massachusetts town of Seekonk, which means black goose in Wampanoag, was once a quiet rural place of woods and marshes, often traversed, and sometimes ravaged  by, Native American warriors during King Philip's War, in 1675-76.

Then, in recent years, came the wholesale paving over of the place with box stores, shopping centers, car lots and all the other hallmarks of Everywhere, U.S.A. In other words, Seekonk is a place that I try to avoid.

Alas, I accompanied my wife on some last-minute Christmas shopping in Seekonk, to be surprisingly rewarded by this composition created by an abandoned rubber glove on the pavement in front of T.J. Maxx.

I was reminded of the abstract photos of Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Aaron Siskind, whose haunting details of forgotten and found objects in the New England scene famously included a Gloucester fisherman's old glove.