Bruce Ross

Bucharest Autumn

Bucharest was once called the Paris of the East. Visiting with haiku friends in the old part of the city with its wide roads and wonderfully detailed low homes and hearing a concert of baroque lute music in an ornately decorated hall showed why this might have been so. There was also a palpable peacefulness in the area unlike the frenetic modernizing everywhere where once Ceaucescu had almost all the buildings of that Utrillo look-a-like torn down. In the little outdoor garden of the local tea house a hint of blues came from inside.

                                      old Bucharest
                                      on a concrete wall
                                      HOMELESS PEOPLE

It was autumn and I was returning home the next day. I watched from a high-rise the turning leaves in the late afternoon. I remembered Ceaucescu once forbid the hanging of laundry in all of Romania.

                                      Bucharest terrace
                                      plants and laundry hanging
                                      in autumn light