Affordable row houses, built by Fred Trump
on land once a paint factory,
in the shadow of the Brooklyn Union Gas company.
Populated then by immigrants from Sweden
and Ireland and Holocaust escapees,
a street with plentiful menorahs and
a scattering of Christmas trees
and sidewalks alive with postwar children
on bicycles, roller skates and saddle shoes.
Old country plantings with topiary hedges
sprouting in soil that often turned over
in spadefuls of yellow and blue.
An alley of adventure where someone
raised alligators
and the Park Ave Rich Lady
visited the trash cans with a baby carriage
salvaged items deposited in her limosine.
In dreams the street wavers
from unchanged to unrecognizable
the house is reoccupied but the family
can no longer navigate the streets
or recognize the neighbors,
the sidewalks are naked without children.
Reality not quite as radical,
the real estate ads show all houses intact
the tudor facades removed
the stained glass square of sailboats gone,
the old country gardens and manicured hedges
have given way to brick and iron gateways
and the ad says at #243 there is a jacuzzi
in the bathroom.
And the son of Fred Trump builds palaces
in Manhattan, eclipsing the work of his father
while Dorset Street carries on
with a populations indiscernible from the people-less
photos on Google Earth,
that reveal the neighborhood
contains the oldest house in New York State
something neither Fred Trump nor the throng of post war children
was ever aware of.
©2013 Noreen Braman, a child of Dorset St.
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