Return of the Bugle Vines

On my Marc Train journey between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to go to work, I always look out for the bugle vines that grow wild along the trackside. They always come out with their distinctive orange blooms in the very hot weather. Well with temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit in this region, they have really been burgeoning, as you might imagine! Now across the street from where I work at 12th Street and Maryland Avenue, S.W., in D.C., there is a small plot of land next to the railway line running to Virginia. Some highway workers were there working some months ago to upgrade an offramp from Maine Avenue, a major expressway just south of my work headquarters. The workers had a works office on the plot of land and they cleared the scrub including the lushly growing bugle vines that cascaded down from the stone walls beside the tracks. So I was afraid that the vines might be gone for good from the location. A few weeks ago, however, I noticed the vines starting to spring back up, and yesterday I noticed blooms there for the first time this summer. See the above photographs. Enjoy.


A Tea Party Republican Flips Obama the Bird

If our government defaults,
Mister Obama, it will be your vault--
I will disavow any guilt
as debt-laden to the hilt,
the U.S.A. screeches to a halt.



In the Halls of Congress

Makes us sick to think
we are once more on the brink
as disaster looms
and Congress endlessly talks
in the same stuffy rooms.



Watering the Lawns of Congress

As temperatures soar to triple digits,
the Capitol grounds crew unleash fountains
of water that arc over lush grass; it mists

above the sod as lawmakers haggle over
a looming government default: pressure-
cooker politics while we the public teeter
on the brink of losing Social Security.

Water mists as the sun rises
above the Capitol dome,
creates a rainbow.

Christopher T. George