7-17-21 - Places and Spaces

concrete gardens

with age,
we come to accept
the limited future of our own
corporal self

harder
to accept, no matter how long our life,
that all the works
of our kind
are equally limited
to their own moments in time,
longer moments than our own, but still
all passing fancies, like us, that begin and end
on a schedule unknown to us,
inevitabilities unknown to us until their moment
of denoument,
the whens and the whys,
the mystery lying before us, clues aplenty
all around us, the how-we-will-end
surely a final play like those of all who ended before us,
most all, some version
of suicide, a product of an aggressive, explosive nature
or just the weariness of existence overtaking the will to continue,
unrecognized until the final of the kind lifted its head
and realized it was the last and that no more
would follow…

it might be there are no examples
for us to study,
maybe all kinds find their own way
to kill themselves,
all inevitable ends reflecting the truth
that we are all part of a universe of both births and deaths,
both equal and appropriate
to the machinery
that keeps all the universal wheels
turning

I'VE BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE, I THINK

I’ve
been this way before
I think
and it did not end so well
if it is you
who follow so close
behind me
be warned, there are secrets
on this path,
furtive forms that flash
and slither, all of them, shadows
and forms and in the dim and hidden,
clandestine whispers,
dark mouth to sharpened ear
all on this path
patrolled by silent trees
that shield the sun
and guard untold stories
of the dark
I sense it,
half-remembered
from days
I fear not passed..
secrets…
do not ask,
or it may not turn out well
for I’ve been this way
before, I think,
and it did not turn out well

About 2015 or so, I published a book of travel poems. The book is titled Places and Spaces, an eBook, available, I am required to say, wherever eBooks are sold.  The book includes the extended stories of five trips. The bulk of the stories are written in a more prose form, with interludes of poetry to record some of the more interesting sights along the way. For purposes of this blog issue, I'm going to select some of those more poetic pieces from the trip we made in the autumn, early winter, through the South to a passage along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The title of that poem/story is On the Cusp of Confederate Winter.

For half of this journey I traveled alone, just me and my dog, Reba, who, before she died traveled 35 states with me. We picked up my wife, Dee, in Columbus, Ohio.  We have traveled this way for years. I like to drive and don't like to fly; Dee just wants to get there so she flies, then we meet halfway.

These little bits and pieces I'm posting are just that, bits and pieces, moments that struck me and were remembered in a poetic form later on. Don't expect them to advance the narrative.

tHIso


Texas to Arkansas

a pick-up
pulling a horse trailer,
alone in the back,
one horse, a palomino,
golden mane and tail and eyelashes
flaring the wind,
brown eyes watching
as I pass

..........

a hawk
slips slowly from the sky
to land on a fence post,
watches,
sees all with yellow eyes
that view all that moves
as prey

..........

orange sky
like mist through a forest
of orange leaves

..........

lakes and ponds and waterfowl,
a crane passes over the road,
low, long neck outstretched,
wings spread, a dark shadow
against a nearly dark sky

..........

red sky in my rearview
the road like a tunnel
through the dark,
tall, green forest
on either side


Little Rock to Nashville


I wanted to write about the forests,
the colors, gold and yellow
and the red-brown color
the Crayola people used to call
Indian Red or Indian Brown,
and in the middle
of all that gold and yellow
and red brown Indian whatever,
some low bush that's flaming bright red
scattered among the trees
like little fires burning in the woods,
and I wanted to write about the flock of ducks
that flew over in perfect V formation,
near enough to the ground
that each duck could be seen and counted as an individual,
close enough to the ground that I could hear the flapping
of their wings and the mutter-quacks among the ranks,
and I wanted to write about the hills, reminding me
of the hill country at home, but soft hills here,
none of the hard face of caliche and cactus and mesquite,
just soft, soft forest-hills, trunks climbing close together,
I wanted to write about the sun this morning
and how it lit the colors of the trees
and covered the sky from mid-afternoon,
bringing shadow and mystery and darker colors of the night...

Charleston, West Virginia

The forest colors have changed,
the yellows gone as we have journeyed further north,
and the gold is starting to fall as well, 
a shower of golden leaves around me as I stand by a river

a little further along,
Huddle In, with friendly servers, 
dark thick coffee and pie,
not homemade, I'm sure, but good,
without the usual taste of something made by robots
and child slave labor in East Berserkistan,
all before 10 a.m.

continuing north, the colors now
are mostly shades of red and brown,
on a hill surrounded on four sides by forest,
a horse enjoys a pasture all his own

in a dell, green as spring, a small church,
white clapboard with a white wooden steeple
rising twice the church's height,
on a hill behind the church, rows of tombstones
in rank and file, climbing the hillside
like steps to an afterlife that, if we are lucky,
woud look exactly like this little green dell
and this little white church

I stop just across the state line
so Reba can walk and pee, just across the highway,
three cows line a ridge, dark cut-outs against the sky

the road rises in front of me, bordered, as always,
by red and brown forests, at the top,
a silver-dollar moon on a pale blue sky

Charleston to Columbus

lost, then finally straightened out,
I follow the road, a narrow two lane 
that twists with the path of a river going north,
on the river side, shacks, square little homes
with junk cars and several hundred dollars worth
of scrap metal in front, 
and on the other side of the road,
great brick houses with wide green lawns
and barns and horse stables

Columbus

another dark day,
gray and overcast again,
rain hanging back like the word that gets caught
on the tip of your tongue,
there, but not there,
waiting in the wings, waiting for its cue
to bring on the storm

Dee prowls the shops of Old Dublin
while I enjoy the luxury of a latte and a Times at Starbucks,
this assumed as an entitlement a week ago,
now joins my list of things to be thankful for

finally, and by accident, we find ourselves on High Street,
right in the middle of Short North, the arts district,
but the galleries all seem to be closed, 
so we settle for lunch at Betty's Food & Spirits,
named, it might be, after Betty Page, whose photos,
along with other mid-century pin-up girls, paper the walls,
the most vivid dreams of my 14-year-old  days and nights
revisit me as I enjoy a bowl of beef vegetable soup,
a bit thin of broth for my taste, but full of vegetables,
with thick chewy bread

​To Roanoke

When I passed this way two days ago,
it was dead-black dark
and I couldn't see anything but the moving island
my headlights threw ahead of me -
today I appreciate the tree-covered hills and vistas
as we curve around the mountain side,
though the rain has stopped, 
most of the color on the hills is gone
and what remains is draped in drab by the overcast sky

a smaller, slower road with dips and turns and twists
that take us across a river, then alongside it for twenty miles -
people here are different from people in Texas
who post the name of every river and creek
whether flowing water or dry,
that every road, paved, caliche, or blowing dust crosses -
we value water for its scarcity and want a name everywhere
it might be found, even if only a couple of days a year -
here, even rivers have no posted name

this river, wide with white-water rapids deserves a name
we thought, even if only the name we give it

"man with no name" river we have named it

"El Rio Sin Nombre"

a white house on a hill surrounded by leaf-bare trees,
and behind them, mountains showing in bits and pieces
through the fog on the road,
short, thick-foliaged pines stand, 
crowded side by side, like spectators standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, watching a passing parade,
or, I think of the hundreds of clay soldiers
lined in rank after rank, buried with a Chinese emperor -
fog drifts around them and in that shifting fog,
the soldiers seem to move, coming alive
while their emperor still  lies in dust

In Roanoke

A fellow at the produce market suggest Ernie's, 
right around the corner,
a tiny little place, long and narrow,
just wide enough to set up a line of booths
from front to back and a couple of stools
backed up against the grill - it is crowded,
only one booth left when we slip in the door,
with noisy, downtown people, hardhats to neckties,
and all fashioned in between. - Ernie the proprietor is also
​Ernie, the cook, prepares the best breakfast in months -
two eggs over easy, sausage patties, dry wheat toast
and thick dark coffee

Not much to impress us at the museum,
except for the homeless man sleeping in the corner
of one of the galleries, not real, of course,
but a representation of reality, and essay on invisibility
as museum visitor afrer museum visitor, myself included,
walked past without seeming to see him, 
stipping and looking at paintings hanging over the space
where he "slept" and not seeing, as if the homeless
lived in an alternate universe, unseen and unknown
to us until they panhandle us, or scream and rant
​on a street corner

Jefferson's other plantation

From his grand veranda, Jefferson could look out on
the nearest of his 4,000 acres,
large poplar trees,
yellow leaves still holding on 
despite the lateness of the season,
a gentle slope of close-cut grass;
a creek running fast;
another pasture, tobacco fields -
in Jefferson's time, a crop he despised
but planted anyway because he needed the cash;
a forest of poplar trees
broken by a winding crushed-shell drive -
around the side and in the back, slave quarters,
not for the cultivated eyes
of the gentlemen and ladies
of the Commonwealth of Virginia

To Asherville and into North Carolina

It will take all day,
through the curves and thick forests
of poplar and pine, leaves falling lik golden snow,
we begin the climb

a half-dozen wild turkery
along the roadside, undisturbed
by our passing, a fat deer
I see ahead leaps across the road
and through the trees

bad weather gets worse,
we are enfolded by the rain and the fog
and the forest all around us

grand vistas across green and gold hills around us,
cleared pastures,
little villages with little white houses
and broken-down barns, and church steeples,
and yellow school buses parked behind 
schools closed for the weekend

the temperature
at 3,700 feet is 37 degrees, 
a fierce cold wind
blows through the wooded valleys
and across the high crests, so strong
it billows my Levi jacket out from my back
like blue wings, almost lifting me over the edge -
the chill factor is in the teens

To Birmingham, Alabama

 heavy snow during the night has dusted white
across the lower elevation -
higher, thick dark clouds wrap aroiund the mountains,
covering them like a dirty white blanket -
our waitress at the Waffle House suggests
we avoid the higher passes and stick to I-40

the soft, slow slur of a southern accent
can make a Southerner sound stupid
to many ears, especially when it comes
​from the mouth of a Southern woman,
pity those who believe it true

I expected cotton fields
but found forests instead,
still with all the colors of fall,
turning more and more green
as pines begin to infiltrate, the dominate,
tall thin giants
straight as fence posts with a bushy crown at the top

To Lafayette, Louisiana

lunch at a little truck stop
in Pearl River County, Mississippi,
three county deputy sheriffs at the table next to us,
all black,
making me think of my first trip through the south
on a bus in the Spring of 1966,
white and colored waiting rooms,
white and colored restrooms,
white and colored water fountains,
all illegal since passage of the Civil Rights Act
of a year earlier, all unmarked,
but lifelong habits break hard, people still segregating
themselves because that's the way they knew,
but habits change and what could not be imagined,
in time, becomes routine

To San Antonio

I am often told of the beauty of Louisiana,
I see that, but I see  the ugliness as well,
the seediness behind the facade, like a middle-aged
beauty queen showing the sag of body and spirit
that comes from too many nights closing too many bars
with too many men -
I love the food and the music of the accent
but it is not a place I could ever live

crossing the Mississippi,
a beautiful, broad river, like the Grand Canyon,
a tale that lives up to its telling

Back in Texas

the passage of Ike and Rita and Katrina still visible
in broken and fallen trees, blue plastic tarps
over rooftops, piles of debris in fields
and on the sides of the road,
and a travel trailer graveyard, hundreds
of travel trailer in a field, relics
of FEMA and the storms

Trails End

Home!

3,986 miles

11 days

9 states

Home

Reba pees on her favorite tree

Peanut pees on herself
as she usually does when excited
and 
Cat fusses - wants us all to go to bed
so she can sleep on my lap again

And in the end, well done

there is pleasure in travel
but comfort in routine and the everyday,
so I'm back, second table from the  rear,
by the window, back to the river, 
looking out on the corner of Martin and Soledad,
San Antonio, Texas,
life
in the slow lane,
looking for a poem
in all the old
familiar places

The next piece is by Audre Lorde, self-described "Black Lesbian, warrior, mother, poet." The poem is from her book, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance.

East Berlin

It feels dangerous now
to be Black in Berlin
sad suicides that never got reported
Neukilin   Kruezberg   the neon Zoo
a new siege along the Under den Linden
with Paris accents   New York hustle
many tattered visions intersecting.

Already my blood shrieks
through East Berlin streets
misplaced hatreds
volcanic tallies rung upon cement
Afro-German woman stomped to death
byn skinheads in Alexanderplatz
two=year-old girls
half=cooked in their camcots
who pays the price
for their disillusion?

Hand-held the candles wink
in Berlin's scant November light
hitting the wall at 30 miles an hour
vision first
is still hitting a wall
and on the other side
the rank chasm  

Next, another of my early practice boards

Stories My Father Told Me

​

A final poem before closing this post down.


Piggly Wiggly promenade

walking across the parking lot
in high heels and black capri pants
that draw attention to hips
going a little broad and ass
on the way to droop
and a white cotton blouse
tucked tight into her pants
small breasts,
nipples round and hard as marbles,
nodding with every step

she struts as she passes me
and smiles, and you know
she's having the time of her life,
giving all the little bagboys
mid-afternoon hard-ons,
free in this parking lot
for at least a while,
free at least until the groceries
are safely loaded into her Volvo
and she's on her way to pick up
little Brittany at ballet 

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