Here and Now (Again)
  • Home
  • Home

HERE AND NOW

(AGAIN)


GONE AND BACK AGAIN (6/24/21)

6/24/2021

0 Comments

 
I published a book of travel poems several years ago, titled "Places and Spaces." The book is composed of five long poems pertaining to five trips I took, most often alone, except for my dog in the co-pilot seat, tales of my travel through about 30 states. The book, as I always remind people, is available, along with my other books, wherever eBooks are sold.

In this post, I will write of other places I've been, far and nearby, or, in at least one case, a place where I'd just like to go, and in all cases, not included in the book. 
​
​
​
ALIEN ENCOUNTER
Picture
​








​

My academic foxhole

a detachment of airmen
studying Russian at the university,
about forty of us,
the closest thing to a bonafide military unit
in the city,
we were asked to take a prominent position
in the Veterns' Day parade

misfits in civilianlife,
most of us saw no reason
to change our stripes in the military

so,
forty of us,
all eighty left feet of us,
led the parade
to a cadance set by our Colonel,
he who tied flies in his office all day,
while his First Sergeant hid out
at the VFW downtown, hoping, I suppose,
that if nobody knew he was
involved with us, his, to that point
sterling military reputation, might survive

a crippled lizard weaving down the street,
our contribution to the paradde, 
some of us, those of us not too hung over or high,
might have been embarassed,
but that probably wasn't more than a couple of us,
at most

~~~~~

in the end, we did what we were supposed to do,
learned enough Russian to be able to telll
when the war was about to start,
fighting the  cold war, knowing
that if it ever got hot we'd be the first to know
as the bombs fell first on us...

but a year of our militray serevice
spent on a university campus,
learning nothing that had anything to do
with Vietnam...







​Starbright








I've posted this many times before, but with what's about to happen in another land we have abandoned, I feell like I want to post it over and over again.


history’s young victims

walking beneath
my second floor window,
in their school
uniforms,
walking in a disciplined line
lead by their teacher,
I could hear them
singing,
their high light voices
waking the thin mountain-air
morning

joyous morning
then,
a sweet and innocent
moment
in a strange and foreign
place

a morning
and a moment
I will not forget

a memory
struggling against the cruel beast of history

a memory
that cannot shield these children...

---

remembering...

trying not to think
of what happened to these
beautiful, singing
children
in the near 60 years since

those children, victims of
of the beasts
who came through years and bloody seasons
to devour their time
and place,
their life and the innocence
of that morning

(Kabul - 1969)










​
Serving on the frontier, a single road connected the city tothe desert and the Hindu Kush, a shadow in the distance and the Kyber Pass to Afghanastan, the path Alexander and subsequent conquerers used in the millenia since. That same road cut between the two parts of our compound, supposedly a secret installation (the only American base I ever served on that didn't fly a flag). On one side of the  road was our living quarters and on the other sided, the truly secret operations component of the facility. 

It was about half way through the  year I served there that I woke up one morning, had breakfast at the mess hall, then came to this sight as I went to cross the  road to go to work. 

​I wrote the piece in 1967. It was my first published poem upon returning back to the States in 1969. The piece was published in ARX a small journal in Austin the survived long enough to publish two of my poems before going under



I awoke one morninG and there was a

camel
              camel
                            camel
                                          camel
                                                        camel
                                                                      camel
                                                                                    camel
                                                                                                  camel
                                                                                                                camel
                                                                                                                              camel
caravan
marching single-file
across my back yard,

they were

brown
             &
                   ugly
                             brown 
                                           &
                                                 brown
                                                                &
                                                                     ugly
                                                                               bown
                                                                                            &
                                                                                                 ugly
                                                                                                          brown 
                                                                                                                        &...

and all the trade goods
piled on their backs
made the clatter clang clatter
that had awakened


clang
            clang
                         clang
                                     clang
                                                  clang
                                                               clang
                                                                            clang
                                                                                        clang
                                                                                                      clatter

then they went their way
​way and I went back to sleep





​

                           

​




Days when







hanging on

switchbacks
down the side
of the mountain,
the town on one side
of the road, sheer
drop to the valley below
on the other
with an occasional shop
or restaurant
jilting out over the edge
on stilts…

an old mining town
hanging on to the side
of the mountain through
boom and bust and back to
tourist boom, attached
to the mountain
by a whisper and a prayer,
out-of-towners
like us
grazing where intelligent
mountain goats
might hesitate to tread

it is exhilarating,
this high air, this human quest
for destiny and wealth
and life despite all obstacles,
ridiculous,
when you think about it,
that nice, lush valley below
inviting, a place to build
a flat and friendly
Utopia

instead, those early arrivals
decide to build a life in the high clouds
of Olympus…

---

Dee goes shopping
in the little roadside shops

Chris throws rocks at the valley

still a smoker at the time, I sit on a rock and try to
breathe

(Jerome, Arizona, 1993)






​
Casper goes to heaven
Picture





Peace Corps training in 1964 at the University of New Mexico training center, included confidence building exercises for the mostly academic trainees. This included repelling down the side of a sports auditorium, climbing about half way up the Sandia Mountains and a three day trek over the top of the Manzono Mountains outside Albuquerque in mid-December.

The first experience in the Sandias, coming barely two weeks after coming from my very low sea-level home in South Texas, was very hard for me.  Better conditioned to the altitude by the time we did the Manzono trek, it was an experience I often think back on as some of the best three days of my life.




three days on the mountain

after two days of climbing,
we crossed
from west to east
in a heavy snowstorm,
knee deep in half a winter’s
accumulation
between the trees

it was about 2 in the afternoon
when we crossed
the crest,
within two hours
we found the clearing
where we slept that night
under a diamond strewn
sky…

a bright rising sun
woke us
under a cloudless blue sky
broken only by the thin contrail
of a jet flying higher, even,
in the cold morning firmament
than where we slept

coffee over an open fire,
and freeze-dried eggs
scrambled,
frying pan and coffee pot
cleaned in the snow,
breakfast eaten quickly
before the last day’s trek
down the mountain,
an easy day,
each of us, as we spread out
along the trail,
quiet in our own thoughts,
remembering
the past months,
friends now
who we knew, in just a few days,
would be gone,
unlikely to ever be seen
again

our last memories -
the mountain
and the three days
we spent together on it

(New Mexico, December, 1964)









another passage one to the other

bright full
moon heading into
the blue-black western sky

orange tinge
to the east, new day’s promise

night
and its creatures
begin their daily retreat

those of us who find life
in both the dark and the light
exult in another passage
one to the
other


(Going east on I-10 from El Paso, any early morning antime in the past 30 years)




moonscape
​

mountains
high and bare

our small DC-3
struggles

as highest peaks
pass below within

arm’s reach, it seems,
from my window seat

life below
if there is such

must be harsh
and hard

with hard people
harsh and unforgiving

to those who intrude
without invitation...

not to be
messed with

as centuries
of armies and great generals

have learned - from Alexander
to even now ourselves

ruing the lesson -

if you decide you must fight here

make sure first you have
the merciless moonscape mountains

on your side


(Flying over the Hindu Kush, April, 1969)






​


Seasons change around us







according to chatter on the net

winter night under a clear desert sky

more stars than you ever knew were up there

the Hindu Kush, the sun’s hinge
as it begins its red glow
behind their dry, ravaged peaks

the guard camp
outside our walls begins to stir,
the shuffle of sleepy soldiers awakening
as the over-nighters come weary to their beds

I, a soldier too, but not in their army,
walk to morning mess, then
to work, day shift on Moscow time

a Cold War warrior,
I will listen to their chatter
and write it all down…

the day begins...

an early flight for their highest commander,
crossing the Afghan air gate,
a roundabout destination, to Paris,
his dour Russian wife left behind, it's said,
who suspects, it’s said,
the
jolie fille who awaits him
with bonbons au chocolat by her bed

according to chatter on the net
the war will not start today…
 
(Peshawar, West Pakistan -1968)







​
Black Orpheous
Picture
Day 

DAYTRIP TO OURAY

no train for us today, for it goes
only to Silverton, while our
destination, Ouray, is twenty miles further
up the road -
`
but if you’re so inclined
for a train ride
through canyons and forests
and up the side of a mountain,
riding in the open observation car at the train’s
tail, smelling the pine-scented forest,
the fresh cold wind blowing in your hair,
I surely recommend it…
`
but our trip this day was by automobile
beginning by following the train tracks
past green fields, and, on the east side,
aspen groves lining the Animas River,
that same fast river I watch from my balcony
at the hotel…
`
the train follows the river back to its high
mountain source, sometimes alongside the river, the
river in view of the passengers and sometimes not,
sometimes the train on a cliff-ledge barely more than
the width of the train,
with the river five hundred feet below …
`
in the car
we see the river intermittently
as we climb our highway path up the mountain,
at lower altitudes, driving through groves of aspen on either side,
like driving through a cloud of golden creamery butter, then higher,
where the leaves have already fallen, the bare white trunks
like patches on the pine-greened mountain side, then, above us
mountain crests covered by clouds flowing over the top
like melted marshmallow, snow blown over the top
and down to us, frozen
to ice pin heads, hitting our windshield
like river pebbles thrown against us by some wild
mountain child resenting our intrusion…
`
then higher,
over Molas Pass, more than ten thousand feet now above the low lands
where I grew up, four thousand feet above our hotel in Durango -
all around mountains white in clouds of blown snow, and the road
wet with ice and snow melt, the temperature dropping,…
`
then down from Molas, skirting Silverton, and up
again to Red MountaIn pass, even higher, eleven thousand feet,
the temperature has fallen to thirty four degrees, half what
it was when we started…
`
then down and into Ouray, determined to cut our visit short,
certain we didn’t want to tackle the two passes again, after dark
when the wet might have started freezing…
`
Ouray, an old silver town, a silver-rush survivor like Silverton,
though slightly larger, almost all the buildings on main street
(the only paved street we saw) dating from mid- to late nineteenth
century, mostly brick and native stone, the thought of getting
the bricks up the mountain to here suggesting of the determination
of the people who made a life here, even after the silver was gone,
the determination that kept the city alive for the hunters and skiers
who are its lifeblood
now
`
the stubborn strength of mountain people never to be denied…
`
a very fine lunch of beef stew and a visit to a bookstore, the proprietor
pleased to sell me a book of poetry by a poet I never heard of, not
much interested in buying a book from me, a poet he’d never heard of -
`
truly the life of the poet in a nutshell, a buyer often, a seller rarely to ever be…
`
and the way back -
`
a reverse of the way we came
under sunshine all the way, ups and downs
and twists and turns and switchbacks
and views of our road high above or far below
that it takes ten minutes of maneuver to get to,
uneventful
`
but for the tumbleweed the size of VW bus
blown by the wind in front of us
as we approached Durango…
`
the biggest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen,
and I’ve seen
a few




Trying a little something different for Here and Now, music. 

This is by a good 17 year-old singer, ukeleliest and barista at my current favorite coffeehouse. Sorry, I can't post the performance here, but the url goes directly to it.


https://slaps.com/arialcorinne

​




WANNA PUCK

wanna puck? she asks

a bar
in San Angelo...

pretty waitress,
long blond hair, well-shaped ass
tucked tight
into cut-short jeans

grabs
the round metal puck
from the bowling game I’m playing
squeezes it into her back pocket

wanna puck? she asks

her boyfriend in the corner,
watching

big
sumbitch…
I switch to

darts,
drink my beer…
​
alone
Chihuahua sunset
Picture
the silence of a moment
​

   knowing again
the first cool day of autumn,
the first north wind that
fiercely blows,
the rain that came and came
and came some more
on a bright summer day
turned dark and stormy, water rising
in creeks long dry, deer leaping
across a narrow mountain road,
a mountain, your first, tall and rugged
against a blue sky, storm
gathering behind that same mountain
a month later, snow clouds
overflowing its crest like a melted marshmallow
on a stick, dripping with a sizzle into the red embers
of a low burning campfire, rocking, a baby in my arms,
my baby sleeping on my shoulder,
my father at my wedding when I thought he might not come,
sitting by the aisle in a back pew, double thumbs up
as my bride and I pass, married, officially
together
on the first of many days to come, so many
memories, so many years,
so much life to
crowd one man's memory, so much to
remember…

random memories that come and go
in the silence of a moment,
flickers,
flames that have so long burned,
fires that, like all of lifeline's burning, will
someday
burst their last spark and be
gone
Watchers from afar





First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh

I AM

I am where I’ve been going
All of my life

Now there’s a thought…

Does that mean this is it,
4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive,
In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas,
Not the intellectual capital of the country,
But often pretends to be anyway

4-bedroom house
With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek
Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place,
This time

Is this thought supposed to offer me on a consolation
As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon,
A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad,
A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise,
A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return,
An end with a roof to cover my head,
protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat
A bed to sleep on and wake from every day,
Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table,
Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not…

All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement,
Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation,
Or a reminder
A reminder of how little of where I have gone
Has merited the going…

A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that
Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end

Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time
Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long
And sometimes treacherous highway,
A place to rest,
Not a place
To stop






This post ends here.
​Continue forwared for previous posts.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    ​78 years old, three times retired, 2nd life poet, 3rd life artist

    Picture

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly