the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 479, March 22,
2004
A.E. Housman (Alfred
Edward Housman, 1859–1936)
“So convenient a thing it is
to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything
one has a mind to do.”
—Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography: 1706-1757
A
quiet moment on a steady boat
A rope
of bulbs strung between the catalpas swung in the wind. The moon had climbed
high into the branches and showered die-hards sipping beer at wooden picnic
tables and metal folding chairs with flecks of silver. Candles lit faces of the
men and women, who talked quietly while they shifted their feet over the yellow
green mat of leaves growing thick on the deck.
“Why don’t you fill me up another for the boys at
four?” Eve said to Juan, who worked under a couple of dim lamps behind the bar.
“They’re leavin’ for home tomorrow, somewhere Midwest, or at least that’s what
they say. They been good to me the last coupla weeks. It’s on me.”
“You do
this too much, Eve,” he said. He pulled a clean pitcher off the shelf behind
him. “They ain’t never comin’ back.”
“They
been good to me, Juan. I’ll make up the tip.”
Eve
turned and leaned against the bar. The catalpa dropped leaves big as fans the
funeral home passed out to bereaved in the dog days. Chill had come into the
air lately; customers had thinned out. It was close to the end of the season.
When
she came back to the bar, she looked up at the lights jostling about. It would
be nice to make a lasting impression, she thought. Have a discussion. Talk
about something other than the weather or St. Ann’s or how business was at
Sprightly’s.
“Juan,
how long you worked here?” she said. She sat at the stool and leaned her elbows
against the brass rail.
“Seventeen
years,” he said, grabbing a towel off his shoulder to put polish on a glass.
“You
like it?”
“I
don’t know. It’s not something I think about much.” He held the glass up to the
light.
“Really?”
“Sure.
It’s a job. You know, a place that lets me do things I think’re important.”
“Like
what?” She leaned farther forward and propped her head up by putting her chin
between her fists.
“Well,
I don’t really want to own my own business,” Juan said. “I never found anything
I was interested in, career-wise. I just want to make enough to take care of my
wife and kid, and to go fishing in my boat out off the jetty.” He put the glass
on a rubber skid in the bar gutter.
“That
makes you happy?” Eve said.
“Sure.”
Towel in one hand, he leaned toward her with his forearms on the back of the
bar. “Sometimes, I leave here at night and take the boat out and anchor it off
the jetty. I’ll lay down and sleep until the sun wakes me. That’s a fine
feeling. I’ll fish until I have something to do or it’s time to come to work.
Sometimes I take Fatima and Jaunito out with me. We watch the stars.”
Eve
turned and looked at the table of masons talking in the candlelight. They were
off to families, homes, someplace where grass spread out like ocean. They
seemed like happy men, people whose work and lives came together.
She
thought about Turner, her husband, disappearing with the cashier from the
PhotoStop. Since then, life seemed just work. Aaron and June were in tots in
grade school. Over the summer, daycare helped, when she had the money.
Otherwise, mom was good, despite all the bitching. Even now, with school in, it
was work, just a different kind. Wake early, dress the kids, feed them, and get
them to the bus. Then, clean, shop, and wash. And if there was time, read and
nap before the kids came home. And then it was homework, dinner, and making
sure they were set for the evening. She ironed a white shirt and black pants,
and picked up the woman who stayed with the children until she arrived home. By
the time she drove the sleepy babysitter home, she collapsed in bed for a few
hours before it began again.
Weekends
were worse. There was no relief from Aaron and June, God love them. Saturday
was the zoo or the movies, eating all the time, it seemed, and never a quiet
moment. Sunday was swimming at the beach or to the park. It was never laying in
the sun, but run, run, run.
Now,
with winter coming, opportunities to get the kids outdoors were becoming slim.
Nights at Sprightly’s inside wouldn’t be a picnic either. It was one thing to
be confined to the house with the kids all day, and then to be outside all
evening. It was another to be inside all the time.
She
eased back on the bar stool, sliding her arms down the brass rail until she
wrapped her hands around it. The wind whisked salt air in from the ocean. A
boat, she thought. That would be nice. She imagined herself and Aaron and June
wrapped in sleeping bags on the bottom of a boat rocking on the waves. She
could hold their warm little bodies close, read them books in the fire of a
flashlight, watch shooting stars streak across the Milky Way.
to make a highway pretty’s
been a problem since appius
claudius cćcus
decided to move rome’s legions
faster, farther, and more efficiently
in all these years—
nay, millennia—of pavement engineering
only romans themselves
solved the highway beautification
problem
with a landscaping program
once dead, they would be planted
along the shoulder of the appian way—
a perennial for everyone to see
for the rich, broad-shouldered,
single-eyebrowed mausoleums;
middle classes rested, if not chicly,
then tastefully,
in sprawling columbaria
kept garden fresh by slaves
later sown in potter’s fields
a hundred thousand miles of memoria
erase the eyesore of interstate,
four- and two-lane,
divided, undivided, turning-lane,
soft- and hard-shouldered,
urban and rural highway
behind guardrails,
perhaps even holding them up,
gravestones, urns, crosses,
wreaths, stars of david, mausoleums,
vases, crescent moons,
bronze baby booties, photos behind glass
gone the need to plant
to plow to mow to send
men in orange suits
to pluck ballooned shopping bags
from bushes
to stuff sun-faded wreaths
into black plastic bags
send
short poems, short thoughts, fictions, or nonfictions to the poetrysheet, where whimsy, subversion, and lining the porch with
jars of suntea are our highest values
submit/whimsy/subversion/bowling/archive
Poetry
News!/contact/subscribe
all
material copyright poetrysheet and
personally recommended press, unless otherwise arranged with the authors. for
information, contact rev. patrick dobson,
1132 e. 65th st., kansas city, mo, 64131, 816-333-7303.