Older Things

For Poetry Month. Inspired by the poetry of Jim Harrison

I have of recent years fallen in love with older things:
A bicycle lock key in an old business card box,
Bobby Thomson’s Topp card folded and passed from wallet to wallet,
a Cracker Jack whistle carried on my keyring, prized like an Olympic Gold Medal,
a Leaves of Grass on the window sill,
a laminated red maple leaf bookmarking Tennyson’s “Ulysses”.
On a bookshelf nearby my mother’s photograph.
I wish I had known my Mama better.

These are but a few of the older things
gathered in the graveyard of my memory,
a place where things go not to die,
exhibits in a Hall of Fame of Older Things.

I make my way through the exhibitions
like some gondolier along Venetian canals.
Here’s a small black rock a college friend gave to me.
She said it was a meteorite come roaring out of the sky.
I loved her. She had other plans
than marriage. It was the call of an explorer’s life.

In a beat-up wooden box somewhere in a closet I have letters
she wrote me way back when she was in Antarctica.
Then, like some Michael Rockefeller, she disappeared.
When I received the news, I was off to bed for a week.
Her life, a piece of parchment shredded into tears.
She was a Cape of Good Hope,
a Shambhala, a nightingale garden.

Outside the sun. The birds chirp their spring songs.
The sun sets in the West as I stroll
through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
my mind wondering if Nebuchadnezzar was happy.
Did he walk through these same gardens and fall in love
with older things?

When I am alone, I am alone

Lemons are sour,
Apples are sweet,
And love is a ghost
In the dark of the night.
When I’m alone,
I’m alone.

She slammed the door on
Sunrises, sunsets,
Walks in the park,
And days never to forget.
When I’m alone,
I am alone.

Strolling hand in hand,
A kiss on the lips,
A whisper in my ear,
A small move of her hips.
When I’m alone,
I am alone.

Spring rains, autumn leaves,
Summers on the beach,
A snowman or two,
A Thanksgiving feast.
When I’m alone,
I am alone.

Then came a butterfly,
A rainbow colored sky,
Stars and a new moon,
And a long, deep sigh.
For I’m notalone,
I am not alone.

Yesterday’s memories,
Tomorrow’s treasures for
Art and poetry
And music bar by bar.
For I’m not alone,
I am not alone.

When I was young

Memories  of my green years
Return with a smile
Now that the rush of the day is done:

Fireflies dancing on an early June night
to a chorus of cricket song,
a hot summer afternoon skinny dipping
and the water running ‘tween my toes,
picking blueberries for a pie,
crushing autumn leaves
and watching fragments fall,
rain pattering the roof,
the smell of tobacco curing in a barn,
snow ball fights and snow ice cream,
a sleigh ride on a New Year’s Eve,
biking countryside on a spring morning,
lying on a field of Kentucky bluegrass

in those Tom Sawyer days
of white picket fences
and Huck Finn following the river.

And oh, the childhood friends:
Cinderella off to a ball,
Jack and a beanstalk climb,
Snow White with her seven friends,
Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road,
Peter Pan and the Lost Boys
making Captain Hook cry,
Robin Hood facing down the Sheriff,
Poe at the midnight hour,
Roy Rogers astride Trigger,
Long John Silver finding treasure,
Tarzan swinging branch to branch
swimming across a jungle sky,

And Sherwood Forest,
Neverland and Oz
as swell as swell can be.

Near 500 words: TW and the Existential Threat

Episode 19 of The Writer.

TW (aka The Writer) wasn’t sure why he had said, “Soon.” The word just tossed itself out of his mouth as TW stood beside Cat’s graveside. As he carried his shovel, his lantern and his Bible back to the house, he wondered about what Cat would think of the word. Surely she would have something to say about it. She always had something to say. And it would have been brief. Though the words came out in meows, TW always had the drift of her comments. It was almost as if they could read each other’s mind.

He sat the shovel and the lantern inside the shed and headed inside the house. The clock on the stove said one a.m. Sitting the Bible on the kitchen table, he grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. His eyes hit upon Cat’s food and water bowls. He should have placed them beside her in the grave.

Then he dropped into a chair in the living room, facing the TV. He let the TV be and closed his eyes to listen to the quiet and clear his head from the discombobulation of the day’s events.

He had gone to work early, then seen the director. The director had given him a year’s sabbatical beginning that afternoon. He went over to H.R., filled out the paperwork, then came home. The door was unlocked. He heard a meowing at the door. It was Cat. She was bleeding. He rushed her to the veterinarian hospital. Helen had been the vet on duty. She had gently let him know that Cat was…dead.

It was ten p.m.when he made it home. He buried Cat. And now here he sat in the living room in the dark.

The curtains to the front window were parted. As if in a dream, he saw Cat lying on the back of the couch, looking out at the half lit street. Her tail was moving like a windshield wiper. Her focus was amazing. She’d lay there for two, three hours at a time, looking. He’d lay his head next to her, trying to see what she was staring at.

His eyes moved around the thinly lit room. Everything reminded him of Cat. Her toys. The scratch board. The wadded up paper he threw at her and she kicked back at him, like the two playing soccer.

Then the loneliness hit him. His only friends, other than Cat, were his colleagues at work and a few of the faculty. And he wouldn’t have them now that he was on a sabbatical. He had never been someone who needed or wanted a lot of friends. He’d fallen in love with the idea of the writer as a solitary creature.

An idea came to him. He would write Cat’s biography. He had dozens of pictures. He was good enough of a writer to make it a book people would want to read. People would discover the person he’d spent his last eight years with.

The next thing he knew the doorbell was ringing.

Near 500 words: TW’s Search For His Novel

Episode 5 of The Writer.

Sunday morning, post-Cat-feeding and post-breakfast, TW (aka The Writer) was back at his computer. With Cat snuggled on his feet, he looked at the last thing he had written the night before.

“This is the first chapter. And there will be a lot more from where that came from. Monkey looked at Shark and fired his gun. The bullet hit its target, Shark’s heart.”

“Who is this Monkey? Who is this Shark?” he asked himself out loud. He didn’t have a clue. Then he decided that this would not do. There was no inspiration, no Muse in it. It was just a bunch of dead words on the page the way that Shark was dead.

And Sylvia would know it.

Where did that come from? It had been a month of Sundays since he had thought about Sylvia. She had been gone for twenty-three years and now he caught himself thinking about her. Was she his Muse? Was she the one who would show him the way to write a novel? The last he had heard from her was a letter some five years ago. She was living some place in the Himalayas. Some place called an ashram. And the people there had proclaimed her a guru.

Imagine that. Sylvia once upon time was an atheist. Now the folks were saying she was some kind of saint or some such. Her letter had said that the locals thought of her as the incarnation of a goddess.

If she was a goddess, why couldn’t she help him with his novel? That wasn’t much to ask.

He erased the words from the previous day. Then he leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his bald head. He looked down at Cat. She stared up at him with those eyes of hers. Eyes that told him how smart she was and how caring. “Yep, still no hair,” he said to the big green eyes.

Maybe I’d better get a cup of coffee.

Nope, not going to do it. I have to earn it. I have to write that first paragraph. Otherwise I will sit here all day and bore myself to death. Didn’t that sound like fun?

He looked out his window into the back yard. It was a nice day. Maybe he should go for a walk.

Nope, not going to do it.

He looked over at his bookshelf. He reached over and pulled a volume off the shelf. Without searching, he opened the book to a page. He perused the page and it hit him. He knew just what he should write. He slid the book back into place and turned to his computer and began to type.

It was the week after Mrs. Dish ran away with Mr. Spoon. All because of the Cat and the Fiddle. They had introduced the two at a company picnic. On top of that, Cat had jumped over the moon.

TW stopped there and looked down at Cat. “You think you could jump over the moon?”

Cat didn’t move. She purred away in her sleep. TW thought she was far away in some sort of cat dream world.

Through his window came a chirping sound. He turned to see a robin just outside of his window. “Sylvia?”