New Song: Niagara Falls

On Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend last year, I found myself in a car with cs10, racing towards Burlington, Ontario to try and see a movie. We didn't get there in time, in large part because of the looooong delay getting over the Peace Bridge (and no, neither of us wanted to show up fifteen minutes into the film). 

Once I got over being annoyed by this, it occurred to me that this was a seriously modern problem: I was ticked off because it took me a whole forty minutes to cross the Niagara River while sitting comfortably in a climate-controlled box, shielded from the Buffalo winter. 200 years ago, the problem would have been arriving at the other side safely, let alone how long it might have taken. 

This week's entry is sort of about that. 

Niagara Falls {GET the mp3 HERE!}
(c) 2009 Mark Frey

mighty water rushing down in walls
her river tamed by Ellet and Roebling
and the turbines make her sing

modern day
cross the tumult on a blacktop highway
meanwhile, computer screens
console aging stockbrokers and anxious teens

and bit by bit all the barriers fall
and our world becomes terribly small
and still more barriers fall

everywhere
everywhere I go, they're there
high tension wires and concrete
grid by grid the towers repeat

stratified
streets and poles and lines we've tied
around the planet's growing girth
raw material in strange rebirth

and bit by bit all the barriers fall
and our world becomes terribly small
and still more barriers fall

So
so it's hard to ever get away, and how
how should we cope with it all?
miles of wire wrapped around a hollow ball