Foolish Pleasure

Night Sky

there was a full moon 

yesterday.

missed it.

tonight

it shone again.

Sunrises & Sunsets

to be, 

from anywhere,

an author of sunrises and sunsets,

of moons afire, slivers to full according to the night.

red of morning and cinnamon roses.

sunset, of cloves and grapes, 

of bleeding memories,

new, old, ancestral and still to come.

lunar silver.

make of it what we will:

sunrise, sunset visions, 

moons afire.

light, 

blunt and piercing.

cycles, 

short and long.

sunrises and sunsets,

moons afire, 

slivers to full according….

5 a.m.

I’m walking around the streets at 5 a.m. all by my

Lonesome

like a damn dodo bird.

I woke up in the middle of the night just a few minutes

ago.

it’s hotter than hell and no breeze, dead quiet and dark too;

I heard it was a hundred degrees the other day.

had a fool’s letter on my desk;

the fool is me.

wrote the damn letter to some damn one who’s giving me

one damn problem.

you say you love me 

but you act like 

no!

you don’t even kiss right.

at my forward tilt towards lips—

you swivel quick and

front a cheek.

can’t talk to you, no I can’t.

you’re always asking crazy questions

about what I like and what I feel.

be damned if I know (not on the spot).

I’m reflective by nature, a writer by trade.

so I wrote it all down—some of it—

and put it in this letter I’m writing about.

I told you I can’t always be poetic and have something

ready to say,

verbal repartee packaged and sharp 

like writing

and all set to go whenever you start posing

questions.

that’s something I truly believe and I read it too

in a magazine

as coming from the mouth of charles bukowski,

poet: (the days run away like wild horses of the hills; and you do too).

bukowski put it in the way of a quote in an interview.

I plucked it first for my letter and now 

for my poem.

if I ever meet the old boozer

I’ll thank him for it.

so just about 5 a.m. when it was hotter than hell

and there wasn’t no breeze,

I woke up 

and I took that letter and put a stamp on it and

marched myself to the post-office before I had time

enough to do something sensible like open it up and get

embarrassed and throw it away.

damn. it’s so early that even 

the 24-hour marketplace around the corner is empty.

a friend of mine, she told me that the real city starts

at 5 o’clock.

what happened today?

but my letter’s in the mail-box.

you’ll get it maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

I passed by 5 guys, they were walking along, jocose.

I said hello, good morning-good night, and cracked a joke.

they started laughing and we started to chat.

I wonder if you had been with me would I have found the joke?

would you have laughed?

be damned if I don’t feel silly having sent a love letter

to some one who lives only two blocks away.

you’re old enough to ought to understand

these things.

wonder what you think I am?

nuts?

I hope my poem’s a best seller.

then I can talk about it on a talk show and

pass myself off as the star my kids think I am.

you may not love me,

but it’s literary.

No Broken Dreams

beautiful but sparse,

afloat tidal investigations,

emotions that come and go with mistakes

one’s own and others’—

especially about love, attachment, separation and loss. 

strokes through the waves of relationships

and the following lulls that cascade with sadness.

breathless.

plummets and limits, 

but also of the pleasure of having risen to pleasure, 

of having lived through the best of times,

having breath taken away, 

took,

again and again, and reaching, 

ready or not, to reach again.

No Broken Dreams? 

breaks of reality

but of dreams that go on,

precious for their pieces. 

flights of love, crash landings and 

mending and nursing of fragments.  

No Broken Dreams. 

forlorn tones and sticky resilience

soothe loss and heartbreak and 

make the mess of loves into the molasses of relationships.  

wonder

trudges—

its allure arrests.

No Broken Dreams?

Roller Coaster

the loss of a soaring love is so terrible a thing—

that it is better to spend time in a wingless one

than to risk a marooned wrack after the heights.

better a doldrum float at sea than an upended tumble in the ocean breaking waves.

no immersion, treading water, gulping water just not to drown.

such wisdom

less

wisdom,

i came across killing time

reading notes of graham greene.

monotony, no loss

better than roller coaster climb and plunge?

players from Ohio sing a different story.

yes: the sense of the flight on soaring wings.

to dream even if later to awake.

Flowers in the Windowsill

planting in your garden.

till the soil

and me and you too, till.

plants arise,

beautiful,

they’re picked and dead, drying in the windowsill

Heart to Heart 

thirty-five years of friendship’s bonds

fleet time, how it goes

how many times does a heart beat?

a heart no longer beating on its own

but with the mechanized and chemical help of

pacemaker and funnels of drugs

the holder of the heart,

heart housed in great friend,

now lives in hospital bed not exactly resting, waiting for

a new heart that can come to him, 

replace his almost dead one, perhaps keep him alive,

he says casually on the phone.

available is a heart

only by the death of a person whose heart is right for new housing,

housing in so good a friend.

what are you doing in the meantime? i wanted to know...

interest or strength for anything?

in reply, he would like to write

but has only energy to sit up for a few minutes,

before having to recline, lie down, stop.

how about writing some poems?

good idea, he said, energy obviously up.

i look forward to the reading.

Embers

to find a trace of a friend.

a letter, a picture,

memories evoked of time together

not long, not often, but 

time spent easily and well 

recalled 

buoyant times

special 

for no reason at all.

good memories,

embers of spirit,

sparked by a photo

or a letter in 

a disorderly box.

other memories

of other friends, other moments

unwritten, unphotographed

what are the sparks to undampen those memories,

whisk ash from embers

happy or sad returns?

Suspect 

already five months imprisoned and

facing life sentence

whenever the court decides to put him on trial.

we were table mates at a dinner party given by an embassy in Algiers.

music was great

live band playing jazz, hip hop, soul and south africa alive

conversation at the table, 

the usual comments on flavorful food and good music,

on being in Algiers,

now a happier time,

since the years, the decade of civil war, slipped into the past.

he, in his homeland, and working as journalist and fixer 

—getting people to places and sources.

i was visiting, getting to know the place.

he offered to help if i ever needed a guide.

we met a few more times and i never thought more of it.

eventually produced a book.

now—several years later—i come across his name

in a news report:

this fixer for the BBC, Washington Post, France 24, etc.

held in jail already five months, charged with passing information 

to diplomat.

evidence undisclosed,

and he and others say innocence,

say the state wants reporters bottled up,

say he’s been set up to scare and silence.

how to know?

a few months ago

looking for styles and approaches to compare,

a class to teach, 

i combed through some topics easily available both in literature and journalism.

one of the topics was spies.

english fiction—le carré—and newspaper accounts.

stories of folks who blend in, befriend easily,

walk away opportunely but unnoticed.

patriots, traitors, volunteers and coerced,

convicted, mistakenly accused, confessed, denied.

now another life in such a story

a life precarious and jailed in algiers.

Winter Barracuda

wintry cold sets in and freezes the ground solid like ice,

sometimes with a cover of snow until the city streets are 

salted and turned gray to rivulets of slush, then frozen again,

slippery and treacherous like 

presidential currents of power,

which since winter in america, january 2009,

are negotiated by a new winter swimmer

who suits up not to

swim the english channel

nor to circle around manhattan or out to alcatraz prison,

but, yes, to swim presidential waters where the barracuda are plenty

and beautiful jellies float with tentacles long and tenacious

in any and all kind of weather.

what manner of stroke will obama be able to bring to the tide

of frozen floes

what manner of flesh eater will find him spicy,

a special delight for dining

slow roasted or fried

bones to crush

a brain to poach

send in a better beggar

one less versed, less thinking

better trained in diplomacy,

more easily trumped.

these winters in america,

these seas so cold.

How was Eve supposed to know?

She ate the apple and, supposedly for that, she and Adam, hence humankind, were expelled from the paradise of Eden. But how was she really supposed to know the consequences of the bite? Eve did not receive the command directly. She was not present to hear to leave the apple alone. Only Adam heard that—before Eve had been created. When God spoke to Adam of the prohibition not to partake of the knowledge of the apple tree, Eve was not even a twinkle in the divine eye. Adam was at first the only human and the Bible story says that when God decided to find a companion for Adam, God tried all the animals, but found all of them lacking. At that point, the Bible says, God put Adam to sleep, removed a rib and fashioned Eve from it. Along with Adam she lived in the garden, privileged but excluded from the original word. Maybe Adam did not transmit the message so well. Or could he have lacked the aura of knowing, so Eve might have had her doubts and taken Adam to be just the fellow in the yard? When the serpent approached Eve and suggested she eat the apple, she did it, then gave the apple to Adam, and he ate, too. Maybe we should be wondering—even intuiting—not why Eve ate the apple, but why, her information left indirect and second hand, she was supposed to obey Adam’s every word as masterly and right.

Country Culpeper 

Summers were spent in the country—Culpeper Virginia—at my grandmother’s home or on a farm of my cousins. It seemed that everyone down there knew everyone else. We would take the train from Philadelphia to Culpeper. As summers began, we were on our way there, and several weeks later it would be back on the train to Philly. At some point, direct train service was discontinued and, on the way down, you had to leave the train at Washington, and continue on a bus. There was the option of staying on the train and taking a chance. If there was someone at Culpeper waiting for the southbound train, the train would stop, and you could take advantage of the pick-up and get off. If not, you’d have to go to the next stop and get return transportation. The bus was a not a bet, but a sure stop. Once, by myself, as I was waiting in the bus station in Washington to make my way to Culpeper, an elderly lady struck up a conversation with me. She wanted to know where I was going and, when I told her I was on my way to Culpeper, she said she was from there and that was where she was on her way to. She asked who I was going to see. I told her I was going to see my Cousins Grace and James, and that my grandmother, although no longer living, was from there and named Elizabeth Gaines. The woman paused a moment and said, “You must be Chuck.” The community was that small. When I got to my cousins’ home, they asked for descriptions of the woman and were stumped that they couldn’t figure out who it had been. It had not occurred to me to ask the woman her name. 

My relatives were farmers. At my cousins’ house, the best water came from the well outside at the edge of the yard. It was handle pump action and, to get a drink, there was a metal cup handy, to stick under the flow of water coming from the spigot of the well. At my grandmother’s house, there was a traditional well: a bucket on a winding horizontal lever, to be lowered into the stone walled hole, but at some point the well was closed up: hydraulically delivered water was installed.

Except for the occasional snake in the grass or birds overhead, there were no animals at my grandmother’s place. No livestock, as she no longer ran a farm. She would not need a shepherd dog, and pets were not an item. She was a one-room school teacher. Although not especially a disciplinarian, she did give a spanking from time to time to an errant pupil. And she was proud to say that when she gave a spanking in school, she would tell the parents and the pupil was sure to get another spanking once at home. A spanking from my grandmother was, she was sure, deserved and to be reiterated.

On Grannie’s property, there was nothing growing except for a garden, the grass and the trees. My cousins were the farmers, Cousin Grace and Cousin James. For some reason I called her Gracie, but everyone else called her Grace. Out on the road—maybe half a mile away—on the road that led to their house, there was a mailbox at the turn into their property. A mailman delivered the mail and newspapers to the mailbox—the metal sort with a metal flag affixed, raised if there was something in the box and lowered if there was nothing. You could leave an unstamped letter in the mailbox along with a nickel or a dime, and the mailman would take the letter and leave change. The post office was not nearby, and I don’t remember ever going there, though it must have happened from time to rare time. Off the main road, you’d go a little way before coming to a gated fence, not locked but with a wire to hold it shut, a wire looped over a metal picket fence support driven into the ground. Once through the fence, you’d drive the rest of the way to the house, itself surrounded by another wire fence. Pinky, the dog, would come up barking when you got close . Once he got to know you, Pinky was friendly. If you walked around the property, he would go with you. He slept on the porch of the house, the back porch off the kitchen, and that was where he was fed. Various cats lived under the porch, and at feeding time Cousin Gracie called for them and tossed food to the ground at the back end of the porch. The cats would come running. If she called one, it would be “You, cat!” The cats had no names. They were kept only to ward off mice. Pinky, though named, was not a pet, and never set foot inside. He was a shepherd, bringing the cows in, in the evening, and accompanying them out to pasture in the morning. If a cow did not go the right direction or began to move off from the others, Pinky would go after her, barking and snapping at her legs until she fell in line and rejoined the group. My cousin told me that at one time she had a house dog. She liked the dog but had found it, more than anything else, a distraction or, even, something of a nuisance. She did not have another and was more than happy having a shepherd, alarm dog like Pinky. I call him an alarm dog, because he was not so much expected to guard the house, as rather to raise a racket if anyone approached, which almost never happened on foot. People would drive up. If they knew Pinky they would get of their car or truck. If not, they would call out, “call your dog,” and James or Gracie would collect him. But such visits were only occasional. Usually visitors were relatives, and most of the time they stayed at their own homes. 

My cousins’ farm was a place of apple trees and fields of corn and beans and a garden of greenery such as lettuce and tomatoes. There was other fruit, too, such as blackberries and peaches, collected and put into mason jars at the end of the summer, preserving such things for the winter. The winter I heard about, but did not experience because my time on the farm was the summer when I was out of school on vacation.

A striking attraction of the farm was, naturally, the animals. For a visitor such as myself, life on the farm was mostly going to the barn in the morning to let the cows out. And, at the end of the day, walking through the fields with the dog to gather them back. The cows, of course, had to be milked, a task I did, but not very well. Cousin James had me milk every so often just so I could say that I had done it. He was the one who milked them, and they were much more comfortable with him doing the job than they were with me. Rejection by a cow? I’ve been there! The milk, once collected, would be brought to the back porch of the house and poured into a machine that had a spinning bowl that separated the cream from the milk and also made butter. These dairy products were sold in town.

There was one rooster and, though not dangerous, he might come at you if you crossed his path. There were chickens, and trips to the hen house to collect their eggs. Eggs were the other thing sold from the farm. Most other items raised there were for family consumption and the chickens were eaten, too. The cows were dairy cattle, so beef was purchased. There were pigs to feed—to slop—with animal feed and also household garbage, the leftovers from the meals. Pigs, it seemed, would eat anything and they got just about everything. Hogs, occasionally, were slaughtered, and the meat would be hung in a special shed, rubbed down in pepper and salt and spices, and left to dry. The outside of the meat would mold over, which didn’t seem to be a problem. Before being prepared to eat, the mold would be scraped away. Cousin James also had a horse, not for riding, but for plowing and hauling. Such work was done better with two horses, so when the need arose, a neighbor would bring a horse, or James would take his to a neighbor, and the borrowed team would work together. 

Socializing was on Sundays. All the day was spent in church or on the surrounding grounds. There was the service and the choir—neither of which I much remember. But after the services, James would be in meetings for hours of the afternoon. He was a deacon of the church, and so involved in local matters. I would go to the meetings with him. After the meetings, there were picnics. Years later, I was in Virginia, not in Culpeper, but in Petersburg, for a photography show I had been invited to be part of. I’ve read that Culpeper is nothing like it used to be. Much of the farmlands have been partitioned and redone as family housing. My grandmother sold her property to a developer who was going to build a series of small homes. Selling the property, for her, was house cleaning, tidying up so that no one else—her daughter—would have to worry about administrative details. She did not want her death to entail any unfinished business. Culpeper, at any rate, was farther from Petersburg than I would have wanted to roundtrip drive in a day, but the thought of the place made me look it up on the internet. I came across my cousin James’ name, associated with his church. It pointed out that the church’s property included a large graveyard—a segregated cemetery. According to what I read, things changed at the church at the legalization of segregation. At that time, the black congregation feared its buried dead might be neglected: segregation under white ownership of the graveyard might mean shoddy, if any, upkeep of the black graves. So to prevent the possibility, the black congregation purchased half the cemetery, assuring, under its ownership, that the black graves would be cared for. When I read this, I thought how amazing it is that, even in death, separation could be such an issue. But it is not the dead who maintain such issues, but the living—some of whom would literally be better off dead! 

Granny’s house and my cousins’ farm were wonderful places to me.  Picturesque meant a shotgun or a rifle leaned behind the front door, not for protection, but for a shot at the sky if too many crows gathered. That is what I was told, though I never saw the weapon in any use except as a dust collector that only rarely got wiped down. An item that was put to use was the barrel at the corner of the house, placed to gather rain water. 

Inconveniences didn’t seem so bad. A visit to the bathroom meant not a trip down a hall, but a walk outside to an outhouse built to accommodate two. After all, especially at night, it might not be a trip you’d want to make alone, since if there were vermin—snakes and such—they would be more active then. Of course, if it was cold or you just didn’t feel like walking, there were chamber pots available in the house, for later disposal. 

We ate plentifully, and I loved the food, but at my cousins I don’t recall it being especially tasty so much as abundant. The main meal of the day usually featured a new meat and a new vegetable to compliment whatever was left over from the day before—other meat, other vegetables, potatoes or rice. There was coffee at most meals, coffee thick, not far from the consistency of mud, and bitter. If you were sleepy, it would certainly stir you! It was very different from the instant coffee that my Dad loved and drank at home in Philly every morning.

Though my parents both were Southerners, neither had much of a drawl. Nor, for that matter, did most of their neighbors in the North, though most of them, too, hailed from the South. Mom, though born in the country was not of it, nor was Dad. They had left it behind, happily trading in the “sticks” –as they called it—for the city. With my relatives in Virginia, the southern drawl was in their speech, as it was in the speech of the radio announcers. Oddly enough, that accent generally was not on the television. Already, the preference to avoid sounding identifiably local, had gotten to television. It always struck me as odd that the sound of day-to-day speech was not a part of the television, that it was so different than the sound on the radio and from the mouths of the people of the area. I did not realize that the ideal sound, for many, was an homogenized accent polished in circles designated as “educated”, much as, I would learn much later, that in British circles there is a designated “Received pronunciation” that is given preference by education, designated as “middle class,” and whose region is not thought of as place but as an educational system. To be identified as of a nation is one thing, while to be more closely identified as of a region is a thing altogether different. I was learning this in Culpeper, Virginia, before I was aware of it—that many markers, “culture,” are carefully chosen while others just as carefully are pushed aside.

My grandmother had several brothers, but none of them married or had children. Although she eventually lived with my parents most of the year in their home in little town, Yeadon, just outside of Philadelphia, Grannie always returned to Culpeper for time in the summer, saying she could not separate from the place, because, in her words, she was an important person there. Her connection was maintained and though she passed away in Yeadon she was buried in Culpeper, the place, for me, of summers, land, fresh butter and milk, and the occasional snake in the grass.

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