-New morning-

In the space reserved for morning

It's Dylan’s Theme-

Time Radio Hour, with host
Bob Dylan introducing songs,
Many of which are not common to radio.

This morning's entry is a rebroadcast from last week's show

Ending with the song, Cotton-Eyed Joe.

Later, after a jolt of Elliott Carter’s 5th
String Quartet confiscating the senses

Tucked between two cups of Columbian
And the non-stop

Yapping lunatic staked on a leash across the street

I decided to put an end to the morning
On my own terms.

I was shaken by the fact that I had as little
Understanding of "Cotton-eyed Joe"

As I'd had with Elliott Carter,

And I presumed a more refined nature of things
After a two hour nap lasting into a mid-afternoon's

Thickening heat chafing my neck at the adam's apple.

So I read a few poems by some famous people

In order to jump-start the sensibilities. But—

None of them seemed as capable
As my earlier encounter with Cotton-Eyed Joe.

So I slipped a musical choice
Into the slot of the glistening player:
Jug Band Music's "K.C. Moan"
And took comfort in its instruction in persistence.

Now I'm charged to make another effort before dark or
Pack-up, call it a day, and leave the whole damn mess to history.

-September 17-

“I have discovered that most of

 the beauties of travel are due to

 the strange hours we keep to see them:

 the domes of the Church of

 the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken

 against a smokey dawn—the heart stirred—

 are beautiful as Saint Peters

 approached after years of anticipation.”

1.

Thus begins the Suite to “January Morning”

By William Carlos Williams.

I reach for a pack of cigarettes
Somewhere in the middle of it
Gone missing now for near 30 years
Justifying myself to myself that

My element is back there with the best of them

And it’s pure as Weehawken.

Nothing I've ever lived with sounded like Weehawken.

But the walls of the water tanks rose above
The beauty of the neighborhood.

Once, from the top of the hill
As high as I could pedal,

I watched them being primed
In the same pea-green as the entry's plaster

And below the hill steeply downgraded,
With me straddling the cherry-red Schwinn,
With the painting men tethered high
To the walls of the tanks,
The river ran to the ocean without a thought
To what it was doing to itself

And although I didn't know it,
From the highways beyond the river
Running southward like the water
One could get to Weehawken.

2.
This morning, during a digital recital from the stage
Of another in a long line of college readings,
Mr. Williams recites his poem "Spring and All"
And in Closing, he said to those in attendance:

"By the road to the contagious hospital..."
Ridiculous!
How is that in a poem? Well,—
It is."

  

-Hold that pose—

We're neatly dressed
And standing for a snapshot

On a Sunday morning,
My father, my Uncle Frank and me.

Behind us, the Church is dressed

In scaffolding, ready for its facelift.

Between the index and middle fingers
Of my father's right hand,

The burning Chesterfield waits
For the shutter to click,

For the lens to record our drop of light,
It waits for the next penetration into his lungs.

Hold that pose. The smoke
Which hangs in the air from the burning tip

Has become the smoke that got away.
I saw it going.
I didn’t see it coming.

Enclosed is the snapshot
Of a moment in time preserved
At the face of his Church.

                                           

-wait a minute-

wait a minute.

I just read the poem

that won a hundred bucks

from the magazine contest

and sure, it was pretty good.

I mean, yeah, it was okay. but

look:

the poet writes of such
simple recollections of her childhood;

the foundations of her grandmother planting

and picking vegetables in the small

garden in the backyard,
and inside her kitchen, constantly
rearranging just about everything she looked at.

sure, the poet caressed the imagery,
folding layer on layer without sentimentality
remembrances of her grandmother unfurling
her long greying hair and brushing
it down at the mirror

in her silent evening routine

after the dishes were done
and her children, the poet’s parents,
were already in bed, but not sleeping
and she writes of listening to them

speaking softly of the things of the day
behind the closed door
with its cracked pane of opaque glass

and she writes of feeling the silken

length of her grandmother’s hair, smiling
back at her through the mirror,

the room, drenched with the scent
of a distant perfumes,

of her grandmother whose day-dresses

were patterned in flowers with shallow pockets

like her daughter’s, the poet's mother;
the bright day-dresses, aproned for housework,

the grandmother whose husband
died of diabetes

soon after the amputation,

her husband who looked older than she did,

becoming weaker sooner than she
became weakened

and the poet speaks of her grandmother
never recovering,

never thinking to try to recover
from her husband's long suffering

and she died in her sleep years later,
after months of confinement in the same

tall bed she shared with her partner in life and

wait a minute,

wait a minute!

that’s worth a hundred bucks?  

-Souvenirs-

damn melancholia.

I've tried to avoid it, knowing

its fatal trap, but then in the clearing

during the closing

movement of the dance

it appears with its magnetic

shenanigans,–– the early
romance of the balconies,

and sure,— that moment

beyond the spiraled stairway
leading to the school's observatory.
(old J. J. Harrington scolded
we should be looking at the moon.
but we were.)
I've tried to avoid it, but

wouldn't you know, a light rain taps

to soften the Mercury's roof,
the benchseat is warmed beneath

the headliner's faded domelight where

the great, universal mystique of the prom dress

is slowly defined.

I've tried to avoid it, but

so many visible stars above the spindrift

illuminate its salt and, well,— 

maybe she'll recall how the poem goes.

for Elaine San Marcos.
                                        

-last Albie-

It’s been told

in the folklore of land-chantey
of the ballpark’s fatal

infield chemistry—

a shortstop
bending at the waist

to scoop the sharp

grounder up, the blood
runs into his eyes and head
and when he rises, up he rises, the blood

of his arteries will run

from his head, spill from
the sockets of his eyes

drain to cloud his brain and

go down ye blood-

red roses, down.

                        Quequechan

-requiem- for the dear girl from the projects down by the river

piano:

let’s go to the music.

let’s see the floor as planetary.

let’s realize it's only our own kind

who dance with one another on purpose.

let’s be territorial.

let’s forget the thought of going outside.

with one step we begin,
with another we continue.

It's the last step which finds the dance at an end.
It's the silence at the close of the song which lingers.

                                 

-at the funeral procession-

On the sidewalk with my grandfather

Waiting at the curb in front of the house,

I'm young enough to be unaware

Of how old he is.

I’m seven or so and there’s a purpose

In standing there together.

In the warm months, my grandfather
Sat in the backyard under the grapevine
Which he cultivated.

In the dank cellar, he'd press its grapes
For the red table wine he drank,
As far as I can reflect, throughout his day.

From the outer-band of his constant fedora

The indelible stain of sweat held fast.

The worn grey cardigan had lost its color

And violet droplets from the Port

Crusted over the long unlaundered months. 

He was a quiet old gentleman

And standing with me on the curb,

Traffic-heavy Bedford Street rumbled

At our feet in front of the house we shared

With his wife, my mother and father,

My brother, sister,

And multitudes of time-replaced pets.

But when the funeral procession moved by

Everything slowed to a silent cadence.

As it passed, he gently tipped his fedora

Holding it by the crown with his fingertips

In what I later learned was an act of respect

To the living family transporting its dead.

At its end, he placed the weathered soft-hat 

Back on his head without adjustment,

As if time had taught him how to do it.

Across the street, ESSO gasoline
Was pumping and to the left, Little League tryouts

Were assembling, with swarms of kids

Pedaling into Columbus Park.

With my new glove at the ready,

Season's before my right hand

Would properly fit into it,

We crossed the street together.

I was born a left-hander.
A born left fielder.

But baseball would have to wait.

Inside the fence, my grandfather was told

That I was too young to tryout for Little League

And we were turned away

By old Ray Pariese, that stroonz,

Who rubbed the top of my baseball cap

Disturbing the meticulousness

Of the crease I'd made just above the brim.

So, hand-in-hand,

With my glove positioned to play,

We crossed the busy street to our first-

Floor tenement and the inside life of our house.

In time, I'd grab that glove from the hook

On the wall in my bedroom and cross

The same busy street to the park on my own.

                                                Quequechan

-inside Massachusetts-

the fact is

I don't remember studying 

anything in school.

but later on in Boston

I had a peculiar hankerin’

to meet

a young woman from way

out west.

Mount Holyoke.

she studies at

Mount Holyoke, I could say,—

the sound of it

impressing my friends in Boston.

but
I never came to

find true love at

Mount Holyoke

but then

I met a young woman

studying almost everything at

Wellesley way back east.

                    for Beth Nobel

                      

-Breath of air-

Heaney spoke to Hughes, in part,

At the memorial service for Hughes;

—I am the least of poetry’s children.—

I liked that and decided someday

To lift it, with all the obligatory maskings,
For use in one of my own poems.

I am the least of poetry's children.

Here and there, stones are put into place.

Other stones sit atop these and still others
Will form the finishing capstones.

In another direction,
An emerald-coated moss

Clings to the bark of a tree

Which branches outward

Yielding leaves and in winter

Yields the truth of its geometry.

Atop the lay of this Dartmouth farmland,

Weeds protrude from between the stones
Of a wall built longer ago than my earliest years.
The weeds move upward and outward in an act
Of stubborn behavior.

It’s a puzzle of fragments, poetry is and the words
Cling together and build upon one another
And the phrasing spreads outward in its imagery and

Sometimes it all just happens as fundamentally as this.


                                       

                                            

                                        

-high school confidential-

the full-bodied Moon

pendant of the river

illuminates the rooftops

and from the street corner

polishes the gull-finned Impalas.

earlier, her black & white saddles

slipped magnetically

across the dance-floor pulling me in.

but below the dome-light of the headliner

is where we'd find the closing

tune of the dance.

it’s the full-bodied Moon

which conned the saltwater

and bluing the Spindrift, drove us crazy.

                    with Madeline of the Dominican Academy.

                   Fall River 

                                            

-poem 1017 (101)-

proof of poetry

and the facts are such

as they are remembered.

my childhood

friends lace-up their spikes

advanced from the laces

of their sneakers.

on the corner, the sweeping

fins of the automobiles seem designed

so as to be leaned upon.

In the park at twilight,
the dugouts alter their designated functions

and as evening darkens,
drape the incandescence, shielding us
from the eyes at the windows.

the neighborhood girls

are forbidden to do such things

as counseled by their mothers,

as dictated by their fathers.

but the poetry
will not hold them back,

will not throw anything away,
will be recorded — such as
whatever is remembered.