Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: poems

  • The Avon Lady: August 1955

    She would appear way down our dirt road
at the turn-off, leaving a quarter mile more
to walk to our house; ample time to run, get
mother and for her to get her saved change,
put away weekly in her left dresser-drawer.
Momma! Momma! The Avon Lady’s coming!

Lugging two big black satchels, yanked her
arms down, rounded shoulders, trudged her
gait, but she never wavered, never stopped. 
Her long dresses, dark, austere; dark as those
high-tops and thick, opaque wrinkled hose 
amazed a near-naked kid in steamy, white air. 

I never saw any evidence of the woman-things
she sold on her face or arms of weathered skin
or her unadorned, piercing…..unblinking eyes.
Her brimmed straw-hat sprinkled her plainness
with points of white light, seemingly, seeping 
from within, bathing her existence  in radiance.

  • Don’t Blame Me, Blame Bug!

    Hercules beetle
    Every guy has to have his Eve; gal too, her Adam.
If not an actual mortal, a blemish to blame; given, 
no, inserted undetectably and inoperably by God!
"God made me do it: I had a really, really bad day!"

  • Green Time

    To this day, some 40-odd years past, 
still I can recall that instant of offense: 
a negative taken to a shop for enlargement 
and some clueless dudes’ snide comment,
“There’s a lots of green in that shot man!”
I probably blushed offering no defense. 

The photo; my son hop-splashing across
shallow, cold rock gurgling Holly Creek
in glee, startled water and he, frozen blurs
of joyous motion deemed forever known.
Suspended trees' and banks' radiant greens
swaddling him in infinite hues of caring.

Is there such a thing as too much green;
over-abundant life? Are there cravings for
hard-gray walls, rarefied and songless air, 
worlds existing in a mirrored box of self?
Slap! “Little  mosquito shit!” I wince as he
takes a sip of me into eternal green time.

  • The Gifts

    Ligustrum japonicum shivers outside my window; not
from cold, but an attack of bees: Honey and Bumble.
They, enticed and tethered by its hypnotic sweet scent,
ravage and drink, humming hosannas in perfect key.

White corollas falling flurries present sacred offerings
for the soil bound; bounty from their nurturing deities.
Bombus with so short a time to live, a mere few days,
gifted their time now, at my window, to drink and sing!

  • who knows?

    Goldfinch ravishing the sunflowers!  Too much yellow!

    Too loud; his song demanding…screeching:  Me! Me!

    Entertaining, but not subtle enough for beauty?  Maybe.

    Though there are truths he does parade; offering for a fee.

    Can beauty only be the delicate; truth only glaring?

    “The truth is ugly!” “You can’t handle the truth!”

    A curve of flesh, real, depicted or imagined can still

    Elicit bliss; the intuited joy of the incorruptible line.

    Gastrocnemius, Soleus, Iliotbial, Peroneus enfolded;

    The legs perfection of muscle, tendon, bone and skin.

    Middle-aged crisis guy entranced by a woman’s legs;

    Her elongated neck’s porcelain skin, shiver releasing.

    Does need dictate the beauty we see…becoming our truths?

    Truth might be beauty; perceived beauty our only truths.

  • Muse

    Why search purposefully fabricated, lying walls,

    That trashy sweet gum, this August depletion;

    Listening for the….A…purveyor of truth?

    Again, I enact this sweet, silencing ritual

    With little nuance; certainly with no perfection.

    With paper…neatly creased, and pen gently held

    I smile, waiting for Muse to tweak the light.

    Muse is our deliverance…or…our false prophet;

    Which? “Ignorance is bliss.” Just give me light!

  • Going out of Living Sale!

    I’ll stick that sign at the end of the drive

    Monitoring any respond…spying through

    Cracks at the sides of shades, now drawn,

    Which, unlike my neighbors’, were raised

    Night and day in defiance of hidden lives.

     

    Must I place items neatly on slackly shelves

    Or will the sign itself be enough to summon

    What I am seeking….and what am I craving;

    A grimace, a laugh, a Jehovah’s Witness tract;

    A splintered door jamb and feet rushing in?

     

    What would adorn a shelf, entice another,

    That they would not already have, though,

    Perhaps, deny?  My truths, though clean,

    Sparkling spirals to me are likely idiocy

    To them as theirs to me.  The sign is enough.

  • The Visitation: For Fathers Day

    I held my father’s hand once more last night, but only in a dream.  
I did not see his face or hear his voice or recognize a nod, but his 
ever-gentleness stood to sooth my unease of muddled senses.
Almost thirty quick years have gone since I stood by his bed.
Did I, at first, hold his hand? A white cloth, folded in half, 
lay over his mouth for moisture; rare tears traced crow’s-feet
to his pillow and I, new to dying, wondered if he cried from fear.  
But through the muffling wetness, struggling not to sob,
“Your mother…”  And then I understood, “I will take care of her.” 
I promised; only then…I remember, now…did I take his hand.
The hand I held last night was not that of thirty years before;
his hands, in life, had the square bluntness of his days of labor.
Always, he carried a pocketknife to turn the grease and grit 
from beneath his nails into minute, curled strings of grime. 
The hand I held in my dream was only his because I just knew 
and not recognition by touch; the hand I held was feminine,
covered with the sheltered, thin skin of one needing protection.
I’ve pondered the paradox all day, wondering why the hand
was his, but not; time could not have altered to such extreme,
a touch etched in memory.  Believing only in our faulty minds,
I can only conclude that I, so desiring that my father
might know I have kept my promise, conjured a dream, 
a visitation; the hand I knew as his is my mother’s I hold today.

This is a re-post from years ago; a memory of the time my father was dying in 1982.

  • Veritas: The Woman In The Well

    I recall the bucket of coopered staves to lower,

    splash and feeling the weight filling.  Soft rope,

    braided and frayed winding round a slicked-log

    spindle cranked by hand up through a squeaking

    pulley would bring the bucket of water up to us.

    I claimed first sip from the tarnished tin dipper

    made cold to my lips by the wells sweet water.

     •

    If I caught him in a good mood, Old-man Carter

    would sigh, lean his cane and lift me up to stare

    down into the cool, unquiet, enticing darkness;

    his private black hole protected by lid and shed.

    Tall, taciturn and humorless, I though, he told me,

    “A woman hides in the well and sings to me.”

    “You drink the water?” I asked. “I do.” he bragged.

    •

    Even at five, I knew people told lies or as

    Mama called them: stories.  You’re telling me

    a story! she would allege puckering her brow.

    A thousand siren songs pulled me from the well;

    decades falling away before I knew her name;

    the woman beneath the water down the well

    who sings to sooth and protect her only child.

    •

    A goddess, yet still, only a frail creature hiding

    from those that would disfigure, abuse, and

    malign her for the songs of truth she sings;

    holding Virtue, sweet child, tight to her, she

    watches for descending light, a face above,

    an ear attentive to voices other than its own.

    “You drink the water?” you ask. “I do.” I brag.

    •

  • Heart’s Script

     

    We all bear witness, self-sworn daily,

    speaking our lies, shinier than truth;

    painting ourselves, molding a visage

    of reflections from fouled mirrors.

     

    We profess enlightenment yet cling

    to darkness choosing each sin care-

    fully writing new, discreet definitions.

    What is written will endure; flourish.

     

    Our heart’s script perishes with flesh.