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

For the Mercy of Forgetting

 

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with scarlet red

and wear it as a binding scarf

sewn from every word I said.

If it were time for me to sleep

like a stone the river runs above

I would count the clouds from underneath

an accountant in the house of love.

If it were time for me to speak

with roses growing from my teeth

I'd talk of roots and bark and limbs

and dress my skin in paraffins. 

If it were time for me to pay

Charon for my journey home

I'd fill my purse with copper coins

and jelly made from angel bones.

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with climbing vines

and lay my head where heads can rest

with hyacinths and columbines.

__________

image: black barlow columbine

Tricks

 I was playing cards against my own poem, penny a trick

and  

      had

            lost

                  thousands. 

"I brought you into this world," I began,

but she turned into a fog of lemon-fresh Glade,

then to a tiger wearing a bell,

and sat there smiling at me like a dime store Buddha.

She had the keys to me, that's the trouble,

and took them with her when she went. 

Strangers know me backward and forward

and I can only stammer at them, clueless and dizzy. 

She turns me to a gawky bird standing in the sawdust on one leg

while she builds her house around me. 

I am password protected, listed on the National Registry

and greenies stick spikes in me so she can't cut me down. 

I lay an ace and she

spreads out a peacock fan of kings and queens,

Russians and Persians,

lilacs and shade-loving violets.

I am playing cards with my own poem, stanza a hand,

and

       I

        am

             broke

but a newer poem brings me coffee, licks my ear

winds his slender self around me like a climbing vine as I

sweetly purr, "and I can take you out of it." 

_______

For Word Garden Word List -- T S Eliot.

Music: Josiah Bell Change In The Weather

1/31/24

 Some say this the two-hundredth of January,

and are as weary of it as if it were 

cold leftover meatloaf again

or their boss's face.

I shall miss it, though.

When I was 25, I saw Jim off at the train station,

his rucksack slung over a bony shoulder,

and I cried on the empty platform

not realizing until he was gone

that I loved him. 

January brought heavy wet snow that made me sore with shoveling,

then it turned to ice for a while, and now slush.

My heart is forever surprised and jumps when touched,

then sags as it dies like the snow, a stuttering death that repeats itself. 

I was wrecked as the melt set in,

the old familiar malaise in its favorite straight back chair.

Some say this is the two-hundredth of January,

and feel numb with it as if medicated. 

I hate to see it go, as I always do, my favorite season except for Fall.

Its sharp, unsentimental freeze breaks my ease,

and I know, even as it goes,

that I love it for how it hurts me

letting me know I still can care. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Wednesday" 

Music: Mazzy Star Fade Into You

Final Take

 

Take me in your arms, though they and I both tremble.

Take my ticket, in the shape of a falling fruit tree leaf,

light and red and now yours, after all this time.

Take me to the harvested fields, cleared of crow and ear.

Take me as I am, with my empty emblems in a cherrywood box.

Take time to be silent, and in being so become my healer.

Take all that I have loved or shattered, planted or trampled.

Take me to my wedding, that melody in a dead bedroom.

Take me to my grave, where I will subside at last.

Take a photograph and give it to the waters beneath the bridge.

Take down everything the river rocks say--that is my epitaph.

This is the take to keep at last--it is all there is or should be. 

__________

For What's Going On Take This Poem.

Top image created by Bing A.I.

Music: J P Jones Prophet In His Prime

The Duenna

 The light now is a young man

at a long table

with a full plate,

holding forth as jeweled women lean

to catch his words and scent like hungry cats. 

I stay next to the duenna, summer's old widow,

her skin a dead garden under the high neck and long black sleeves.

She used to read him stories

when the silence scared him

and he grew there in the crook of her arm

like a plum added to a grocery sack.

"I wish it would rain," I say to her as I have every day

since summer arrived like a visiting bishop

waving from a sedan chair,

cheered by women wearing head scarves

because others do, and God is watching.

The duenna pats my hand.

I am sick of the brightness of white shirt and linen jacket,

arms gesticulating as children's do when feeding the swans,

and the swans dip their faces in mock modesty.

If only the wind would rise and the sky darken,

this tablecloth would show

how wings are meant to be used,

plates and wine glasses smashing on the stone floor.

"In time," whispers the duenna, as calm as a bread loaf.

These blowy tales will wear themselves out,

the cats and swans will begin to bicker,

and the nights will lengthen beneath our feet like shadows.

Then the duenna will shed her weeds

and wear the moon on her shoulders glittering.

_______

Musci: Bananarama Cruel Summer

Cottage On The Shore

 

Perhaps we are emotional gypsies

though our bodies become a sailor's cottage on the shore.

The heart, like a child, gets lost in reveries

and though it beats in stationary stasis evermore

it remembers warm July, desire, petrichor.

Let me sleep that I might dream and feel again the wagon's motion,

a scarecrow slinging duffel over shoulder, on to ocean.

_____

This is a rhyme royal. 

for Word Garden Word List--Randy Newman and Sunday Muse #251.

Music: Judy Collins Farwell To Tarwathie

Hyena

 

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

faceless blank walking the orchards in a black duster,

you've brought wine

and dying birds

for my birthday, five months late. 

There are no seasons scenting your skin anymore,

you're a false summer,

holding up a pennant

that says, "I am here. Drop everything." 

In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

So tenderly I used to touch the icicles in your hair.

If there are graves in Heaven,

that is where your bed beckons

and always there is a woman reaching up from it,

a hallucination who would do anything for you, even as a phantom.

I told my girlfriends back when you caught me in your spring snare

and I starved very prettily

in your net like a sachet,

I said, "I have kissed a hyena and borne its laugh.

Collect my bones and boil them, my mother-song will stun every April blade.

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste

as I spit it out.

Bring your playthings

so that I can crush them with the pestle of my tongue and destroy them,

especially my old devotion that spoke such fine poetry in your scavenger ear.

________

for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Shared with The Sunday Muse #246.

Image: I Dream of Reaching by Ivan Pili. 

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa Your Heart Is As Black As Night

Nurse to the Water

photo by Jeanloup Seiff

 I am nurse to the Water,

Moon in a bowl at its bedside.

It looks back at me as if to say, "I am here,

deep and permanent; I will always stay,"

but its language is Leaving and every movement

is a perpetual going-away. 

I am bride to the Lake Grass

expending itself in a season's rising.

silent and thin, the Water its artist's garret.

It finds me neither interesting nor surprising

as I see to its unbordered house,

my face a familiar detail that passes. 

Are you dying, Water, a Gypsy in love with sand--

the sand in love with and holding the Cattails?

I make my rounds on the wooden walkway,

Child of trees the Lake Grass envies.

Death beneath my feet, mercy at my hand

I am the Double-Spirit who must be her own comfort

and work by Night, the sister-ghost of Day.

________

for The Sunday Muse #237. 

Music: Roseanne Cash Seven Year Ache 

Song of the Chimera

 

The blackbirds are dying and sing their death

from stump and steeple, barrel and rail.

The police are called every time it snows

and they maunder in the fields, dithery and pale.

I have seen the Chimera

and your barn is burning down.

She is lion, goat and snake

and your barn is burning down. 

Morning appears and suffers a scalding dew.

There is a killer hiding where the lilacs grew

beside the porch of the rectory he burns and claims 

the Chimera is you, and you, and you.

I have smelt the Chimera.

Her skin is fragrant with misery and death.

In the ashes, I have smelt the Chimera.

Her skin is fragrant with misery and death.

In the field stands the papier-mache president.

His is the pomp of smoke house and sty.

The postman delivers catastrophes ill-sent

as the blackbirds call, and falter, and die.

There was love, some say

kept in jars on an old woman's counter.

The gloomy blackbirds beg her for rest,

rest in jars, there on her counter.

There is no more clattering, no good book held high.

There are weeds in the window box, crackling dry.

The killer is hiding where the lilacs grew

telling fools their fortunes from a blackbird's eye.

I have seen the Chimera

coming fast through the dawn

with seven devils to drive her

the Chimera drives on.

_______

for Word Garden Word List # 10. 

There Is Snow

 

There is snow

on the steps of a church where nuns' lives turn to dust.

a mute sun sleeps dazed in the low sky

and starlings let their wings fall, giving up all memory of flight.

The street is empty,

the silent intersection a cross

held in the still hands of an old priest

turned to stone forever.

Women in their black shawls move quickly

but the low sky has stopped and falls

bit by bit

on the steps of a church where an old priest has died.

The nuns are silent.

The women wear their black shawls,

and always,

there is snow. 

_________

I guess this is sort of a sketch. It interrupted what I was doing this morning and demanded to be written. There are a lot of abandoned churches in Detroit, and while editing this, I had them in mind. The congregations, often ethnic,  grew smaller and older until the parishes were no longer viable. 

Dr. Morphia

A doctor was sent for the season

called counterfeit by

summer's heart.

No use in the cure, or the reason

that shadows and rings

keep apart

from the cure that coils in the foyer

of the house that love recommends

to the moon and its lilies who crave for

the stitches that wound

as they mend. 

The doctor prescribes herself autumn

and waits for ice to inscribe

a vow to be broken at midnight

by the needle

disguised as a bride

and when the old brag fades to nothing

and the peacocks their colors remove

the idiot winter with moon lilies wins her

with remedies

borrowed

and blue.

_________

for Word Garden Word List #2. 

Dyslexia

 

I caught an echo of my father

in the way you wear your coat

In the way you're not entirely there

but linger on like smoke

I was looking for a thing that's gone

like those pens with tubes of ink

like mucilage or gum erasers

or feeling loved, I think

Now I've freighted you and burdened you 

and slowed you from yourself

with drapery of memory

I should hook and part myself

But all it was, was honor, sir

all it was was need

to make of you a palimpsest

that I could sigh and read.

_______

For Sunday Muse #178, where I am hosting

the image is actor Alden Ehrenreich

Watercolor

 Last night I remembered you into being

like rose-colored paint swirling in a water glass 

from brushes dipped in street scenes and night windows.

Remember, black-eyed susans sleeping by the step,

remember, rain caught on the upturned leaves of silver maples,

recall, to no point really, the dusty lanterns on the lawn.

Last night my fingertips wandered along the lines of this poem,

looking for the place where your body moved like a brushstroke

looking for me, the way I was, the way I loved how you were.

Last night, I remembered you into being

and the moonlight on the wall made me afraid, of time 

and of memory, and of these lines where they meet, like mourners.

___________

 for Sunday Muse #174.

Here

Here

is the place where starlings gather thick as macchiato,

singing expressivo in the morning, bedlam fortissimo at sunset.

Here

is where the old gather silent, still as a reverie,

rallentando until dawn, then second-souled,

blue-eyed, demanding life again, vivace.

Here

discard heavy indigo, the ultramarine of too many days,

dissolve into a new chromatic scale, alive with starlings,

expressing without thinking, dolce, 

glissando,

Here.

______

for The Sunday Muse #150.

Greening The Jade

There are wheels on cobblestones

outside the windows of her words.

There is a sailor's parrot on a velvet swing

and strands of colored beads in the doorway to her room.

There is never any summer, no noon to white the wall

and so she'll understand if what you told her wasn't real.

A Persian's ears are there to warm her hands

indifferent to the wheeling way she feels.

San Francisco gray as gulls' wings in the morning

or Barcelona in the lazy afternoon

are in the jeweled clip that holds her careless hair back

to ease her eyes to catch the moon.

Don't say you're sorry, don't sing softly in her stairwell

where the echoes' angels fade.

She always knew that open windows let the rain in

to blue her dreams and green the jade. 

________

for Sunday Muse #139.

Love At Zero Or Twenty Atmospheres

We gave each other little sips of air,

enough to keep hearts beating, but

hypoxia made us believe it was love.

Your fallen eyelash black on the pillow

turned to a swan,

our future a loaf.

We called its hissing a song and danced

in the night of its wing, warm and blind.

Our marriage in space, though invalid, was dope ballet.

Now we have a cat, and the swan is dead.

I live in our cat's ear,

you on its tail,

composing music out of echos 

transforming motion into purpose,

all of it faux and yet it takes up every space,

Every thought,

every moment.

So we say, "Look at our cat, stuffed with swan,

his head tilting side to side at us,

isn't he absurd?"

He licks his lips and bats us together,

like dolls in the hands of a misfit girl

Laughing, screaming, friendless except for the stuff she can summon from her damaged and endless imagination.

________

for Sunday Muse 117. 

In A Room-Box

In a room-box with unmade bed, you bloomed
(in time, ajar)
In a room-box with night-sign light, you bloomed
(a venom star)
On the wall, shadow of your swaying head
(crepuscular)
Your odd gift of what is shown, then vanished,
In after-image of gorgeous damage. 
_______ 

for Fussy Little Forms--cavatina.