Professor William Harney of Endicott College has the gimlet eye of a newspaper reporter and the sensibility of a poet. Look below and see why.

Street Scene

This was road rage before we had given it a name.
The assailant swung a baseball bat over his head with the confidence of a circus performer;
A second boy was weeping on his knees. Was it his uncle
Who tried to intervene, draw the violence to himself?
The rest of us were frozen to the walk
When a woman coming out of a bodega
Set her bags down and ran into the
Middle of the street, hands up to make peace.
And then, the oddest thing: she walked up to the
Boy who had made us cower, took him by the ear and led him off.
The boy smiled sheepishly as though found out,
Threw the bat into the back of his car and was gone.
We should have carried the woman on our shoulders, but no–
A friend helped her pick up her things. That was all.
And then the woman was gone, too.

— William Harney

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