The Saints of 1962

 

It was summer, 1962

and I was seven years old. 

I loved our screen porch where my mother never came

except for meals in the berry-bush cicada evenings.

It was my father's domain, and mine.

He read his newspaper or did crosswords

with a ballgame on the radio.

I loved the march music at the opening and in the beer ads. 

Sometimes the weatherproof rug was a dance floor

for my dolls when my brother wasn't there to make fun. 

My main thing that summer, though

was my cards spread out on the old

table, retired from the kitchen, now the grand dame of the porch.

I had prayer cards--

Saint Anthony, Saint John Bosco, Theresa of Avila,

colorful as comic books, bright as the light of Heaven.

I had baseball cards--

Rocky Colavito, Cuno Barragan, Orlando Cepeda

with dark woody borders

and early 60's dark caps

they looked as if they played in perpetual shadows.

There was incense

in the form of my father's Dutch Masters cigar.

There were the sacraments

and the sacrifice bunt.

The saints seemed backlit, blessed by Divine Hollywood.

The players cards were sometimes misprinted with a

green-tinted background as if they were undersea.

I liked to mix them, shuffled and fanned out.

Saint Sebastian, patron of athletes, his foot

resting on the top step of the dugout, gesturing

his fielders into position

with a wave of his scorecard,

or by messages brought by angels.

Jim Bunning striking out the devil with a wicked side-arm fastball,

making Old Scratch look foolish

as the vendors call and the fans

cheer. Jim walks off the field in the sunshine, no shadow in sight.

I have forgotten which cards I had, mostly.

Who was the beer sponsor? Schlitz? Blatz?

What had I done that spring?

What did I do that fall? In summer 1962

my father and President Kennedy were alive 

and so were the saints and ballplayers

On the table

on the screen porch

in summer, 1962.

_____________

for What's Going On? "Forgetfulness"

Music: Gale Garnett We'll Sing in The Sunshine

And Detroit Tigers march music radio intro

The Memory Place

 

This is the memory place, the preserve

of hollow wallpaper grandmothers,

stale gingerbread eyes balanced on

straw shoulders, fragile as a dream.

In this place, maple-leaf red and long

as love letters, her hair revives again.

The swing rope rewinds itself and 

her feet are steady on the knot. 

This is the place where what once was

soaks the air like a diary left on a porch rail. 

Everything is musty, throats close, eyes water

until I take my place, brittle, superannuated,

a carousel horse with painted eyes, spinning.

Mount Pleasant

 "But in the grey of the morning 

my mind becomes confused

between the dead and the sleeping

and the road that I must choose"

The Moody Blues Question 

I remember a secret place behind new house construction

still untouched, with a little brook; I knew the hidden entry.

It was September, yellow leaves nattering on thick birches

with impossible blue sky behind. My solitary sanctuary.

I've not been back but know

that a sub and casino took its place.

SUVs, neon signs, leaf blowers,

but in my mind it's still my private place. 

My wandering discoveries now unfold in recurring dreams

of curious, fey, deserted neighborhoods found just beyond a rise.

The streets are new, but the homes deserted and crumbling

with just a face here or there behind a curtain, calmly waiting to die.

In these latter years, one seems

as real and compelling as the other.

I once saw a pheasant burst from a bush

and a grackle's lost feather flutter.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Autumn. 

Music: Frank Sinatra The September of My Years

Seaside Jump Rope Chant

 

Take me down to ocean side

where sirens work in vending stalls

selling sea glass by the pound

and tide crabs leave their gazing balls.

I was young once, for an instant

and strewed my bones with bright confetti

made myself a red flag flying

as storm surge overtopped the jetty.

I married well, a starfish navvy

who built the seaside park their Ferris

They paid his labor with box jellies

who by their envy made him perish.

I asked the sirens for a chocolate

to hide from gulls who ate the season

when I was halfway into evening

and honey sunset let the bees in.

Take me down to ocean side

bring the digger in common clothes

to move the sand and move me on

in my folded-handed pose.

________

April Begins In A Graveyard

 

April begins in a graveyard

the stasis of winter broken.

Bold dandelion hold my heart

and everything said and unspoken.

I have done this, and that,

often for the last time.

I go gray as the sun moves over me

arranging my bones in rhyme.

Let the lawn grow long and wild, 

the caretaker drunk on his stool.

The old oaks must scoff at upstart April

and at me, a philosophizing fool.

April begins in a graveyard

with its bees more proud than the dead.

Let me doze on a bench in the half-shade

with my hand on the book still unread.

________

For What's Going On?--"April"

Music: Simon & Garfunkel The Dangling Conversation

Hurt Bird

 

There it was, a hurt bird

panting and skittering in circles

on the grass by the berm.

Feeling badly for it, I reached out,

tried to pick it up and help it if I could,

to cradle it and quiet its thrashing about

but it buried its beak in my palm,

a short sharp angry stab

that brought blood spreading across my hand.

I threw it down, said god damn bird!

but immediately felt my heart shrink in horror

and I bent over it, sick over its hurt.

The bird, on its side gasping,

its upward eye a mix of panic and hate,

beheld my gaping face as the last thing

it would ever see, its every

agony saying damn your help and damn your pity,

wishing only to die there by the berm without this hovering intermediary.

_______

for Sunday Muse #223. 

Music: "Something" by Julien Baker

About Athena

She's a headache, father. 
You know it better than any.
And what about that bird she insists upon having?
It swoops down from the top of the chiffarobe
whenever I walk in carrying laundry. 

Oh, I talk to her.
She just gets out those everlasting scales and stands there
without saying a word.
The owl twists its neck and gapes too.
It's unnerving.

I went through her closet
--looking for drugs!--
and there, at the bottom of a tube of tennis balls,
I found a lightning bolt.
What do you suppose she's doing with that? 

Finally, I went through her dresser.
The owl started pacing on the chiff like a constable.
Athena walked in just as I found them--
"Will you be snooping...er, staying for lunch, Mother?"
--six dead rats laid all in a row
like a diamond necklace.
_________

for Poets United Midweek Motif--Owls

The Ballad of Miroslav Barinsky

Miroslav Jubert Hans Barinsky
was fond of candied apricot whiskey
and drank so much, so cheerfully, so often
that they stuffed six bottles into his coffin
then down the side of a mountain on skis
they sent it, helped by sail and breeze
past the graveyard and off a cliff 
poor Miroslav...come to this. 
_______

a silly 55 for my BFF.

Neptune's Time Share

Neptune sold his time share.
Now he runs a riding stable in upstate New York.
Venus can't pull off those young fashions anymore
without looking a little desperate,
and Janus got a gig as a doorman in Miami--
he can scan both sides of the street for a cab.
 
Diana and Egeria are lavender girls, if you know what I mean;
best friends, my ass.
Survey says, Vulcan and Vesta can't keep burning it up forever,
but somebody's got to make up for Minerva,
always studying for another Master's.

Remember when we used to chant:
Boys go to Jupiter
to get more stupider;
girls go to Mars
to get more candy bars.

Ceres is knocked up again.
I guess going vegan didn't slow her down a bit.
And Apollo, wellll, Apollo....
who knew he could lie like that?
He had us all fooled and now he'll do a dime up at Jackson.

I bought Neptune's time share
from the silly fucks who got it from him.
Now I get my two weeks,
but it won't be like it was when your skin was dark and shining.

The lake is frozen,
you spun some shit about having to work,
and so what do I do now--
now that I know that even an off-season goddess
is just another dumb girl after all?
________

for Hannah's challenge at Real Toads. "Lavender girls" (and "twilight girls") was pulp novel code for lesbians, back in the day.

Old Fashioned

I'm an old-fashioned girl.
When I go down through the reeds, 
making my skirts muddy,
my high-button shoes neatly together on the grass nearby,

birds extinct for years except as specimens
flock to me, calling.
Butterflies and moths in all peculiar colors
appear once again,

and I speak to them in the lost language
of former summers.
Here, I am a girl again, with a different name
but the same soul.

I'm an old-timey girl, daydreaming beneath the willows.
This morning, I collected the hens' eggs,
and holding them in my hand, the white shells made me think
of snowdrops, and writing paper, and June clouds.

No one will ever join me here, I realize.
I am a firefly girl inside the jar of my body,
graced with an afternoon's worth of air, but floating out,
always out,

until, by bullfrog dark, I will be only a curiosity, 
like my birds, the butterflies and moths,
barely seen by a child leaning in her upstairs window not far away,
and she will wonder at what she seems to see,

a light on the water, there and then vanishing,
like her own summer days, though she doesn't know it yet.
______

May 28, 1908 Life magazine cover illustrated by Coles Phillips

baby devil

Don't worry about me--
I'll lay low.

I will keep my wicked thoughts tucked into the roots of my hair,
and my hair will spread and rise and wave in the wind
like a black prairie.

Crows will come out of my cogitations.
How long will those window panes of yours keep them out?
My Goddess, but they're noisy.
They are made of bibles and molasses,
and they want to sink their sharp parts into your lazy dreams.

Don't think you did anything wrong--
I would never say so.

Still, if I were a scarecrow such as you, I would soak myself in gasoline
and lean into the sun just as it goes down.
That will be your only chance to shine,
so you really should grab at it, like someone falling.
My hair can be your landing place,
full with baby crows just itching for their first disturbing instinct.

They will love your eyes,
just as I did when I walked the earth, up and down,
a baby devil so pretty it made you look.
________