HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
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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  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  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  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  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.
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