'Sea of summer air'

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.

Treeless air

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