I Am Not By The Dream Myself

I am not by the dream myself, not in
a way you could tell. No there's
very little reason for you to think
I am not by the dream myself.

And on just before I went,
No not anywhere you might go,
I being prepared struck out.
And do you, you probably don't,
I had given in and asked to see her.

Slob. Imbecile. Given in to see her?
No. But you did. I did. Given in to see her.
Loose was the candid reply.
The Surgeon General asked, "Why?"
Loose? Not loose. Not I.
I am not by the dream myself.
And wouldn't you? You have very little
                     reason to tell.

copyright 1980/2011

The Fog

The trees are warmer than the
                air is cold,
the fog is jogged loose from
               the ground
and carried aloft
to the pinnacles of mountains
where there is nothing for it
               to do but dissipate,
Like love
Like hate.

copyright JJW 1980/2011

It's Time To Get Back IN The Woods

It's time to get back in the woods
to get the bucks about us,
with proven managerial techniques
it's time to sling the lead.
They'll die, they say, if we don't
shoot them - a fate much worse then death.
So if you give a hoot about conservation
take a day off from the office,
grab your guns and arrows.
Shoot yourself a doe
who hasn't got a chance in hell
if we don't go out and shoot her.

Copyright 1980/2011

Old Cape May

            OLD CAPE MAY AT THE
            WATER'S EDGE, ROCK CUT
            CRYSTAL

        In what does not draw light
        In what is not something, not the
        mind intellect,
        what is not thought about in clear terms,
        what the mice might know or caterpillar,
        what is not already made to  love us surely
        understood and the world to surely
        make us know though it is cracked and
        does not make light dance on water
        like stars.

        In it is not a regrettable past nor is
        there a time but not with a circumstance,
        a situation, a see this, by light
        is a mask, a shade, a Caliph whose
        squires march, on the beat, move them
        along,
        a catalogue-litany saying things
        for the intellect was barometer.

        Not an invertebrate, not bright flowers
        as a jukebox, not a well-turned phrase
        like the bullet's journey down the barrel,
        or the bottle-nosed porpoise swimming, as it
        were,
        beyond the bar at the light down
        old Cape May.

        I can only rejoice at the pleasantries these
        things conjure
        and the half world between living and a drop
        of blood.
        I can only not know that the tortoise lays its
        eggs
        in a sandy burrow on a midnight beach,
        or the 1930s were a dark night
        no one could believe someone else might also
        be digging.

        This then is the distemper of the mind,
        this then is a handful of peas,
        this then is a genetically coded,
        this then is Mendel & Malthus,
        Darwin of the jungle, breeding a prophetic
        alchemy
        of human resent of man.

        And the slow turning single
        masquerading as a Mozart C major
        is, as I can tell from the lighthouse,
        how all things are, rising and concentric,
        parting and going, mischievous, loving,
        darting plovers; the ramble of berries that
        mark the path through a mound of sand,
        all green and blue, the sun making
        translucent jell of blackjack leaves,
        which without the sun are hardly anything.

        Nor can a statement out of intellect be made
        which would anyhow eclipse this mood,
        this seashore dwelling on piney spits
        of land where not even knowing anything
        the beach plum descends its reach
        for water, we can all attest
        to its plant like behavior.  And this is
        not talking about how you came to be or if
        I do without knowing or if the slaves of history
        knew they were slaves or if I can say today
        I have certain advantages, and in the know
        category the winner is.  So the man
        who climbed  the stairs to clean the lenses and
        replenish the oil was a lighthouse keeper
        for us all, and isn't needed anymore.
        
    copyright JJW

The Green Snake

THE GREEN SNAKE

      If you lived in San Francisco during the sixties then you know that the reason why Haight-Asbury became the focal point of a sociological movement was its status as a transitional neighborhood, having a neighborhood of well-bred intellectuals and professional off one end, and at the other end a neighborhood where the poor and the destitute of society cohabited. Where these two cultures met ideas often times contradictory to both cultures were born. You probably also know that good jazz musicians, particularly flutists, could be heard most afternoons on the boardwalk at North Beach. There you probably took walks along the curved pier that stretches into the bay and talked to fisherman who caught sand sharks and what they called sea trout. Of course you were living there before the tall ugly buildings of later date were constructed, and you know that Golden Gate Park is so distinct in its beauty as compared to any other park in the world that it must be considered separately from all others, a fair comparison not being at all a near possibility. Sunsets dropping behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Cloud banks hanging over hills above Sausalito. All of these things you know if you lived in San Francisco during the Sixties.

      I was working as a bartender at the Green Snake, where one of my customers knew Eric Hoffer, which every one there thought was a big deal and I let on that I did too even though I had no idea who he was. Still don’t. My biggest challenge as bartender was trying to keep the guns of the guards from an armed car service holstered and if they were taken from these holsters, which happened a lot, preventing them from discharging them inside the bar. They never did no matter how large a quantity of alcohol they had consumed. There was no entertainment at the Green Snake but one got the feeling once inside the bar that it was a night club. Perhaps it was the nearness to Broadway and the tourist traps, but unbeknown to the thirsty patrons of the Green Snake, they were the entertainment.

     We of course would get the overflow from the topless joints. Tired, beat up looking sailors would stumble in at two a.m., order a beer and perk up. Italian immigrants who had made San Francisco their first stop in this country and now lived a few blocks from the Green Snake came in, some just after a big Italian dinner. Many of the neighborhood’s single residents also stopped in. These were school teachers. Loan officers at banks. Artists. A rather disproportionately high number of the area residents were artists. Clerks who worked in the office buildings downtown. I often wondered what it must be like to be a clerk in downtown San Francisco. The sophistication. The intellectual overburden seemed somehow to dismiss any possibility of clerking in that grand city. Anybody who worked in the offices of downtown San Francisco must be a high level something or other. Yet people would come up to my bar and ask to be serviced who were no more then mail room supervisors. Within the splendors of the flowered city someone was a time card records keeper. It seemed incredulous to me with all the artists and musicians and poets one could find there. The explanation I found, to this disparity, was that San Francisco was a city of artists, musicians, and poets, and those who wished to be artists, musicians and poets.

      In the morning our customers were old timers, retired city workers, men who had worked as printers with the newspapers, some who had spend their working lives on the Stwo p.m. they were all gone and we started getting workers who left the jobs early. Telephone guys sneaking a beer. Building inspectors. Food salesmen, and there would always be a few sailors who got off the ship at noon and wanted to drink cheaply and put a buzz on before going over to Broadway where the drinks were double the price of the Green Snake.

     Outside there was a canopy over the entrance to the Green Snake which extended to the street. We kept a spotlight on out front, and on Friday and Saturday nights the effect was theatrical, with motorcycles parked outside and their owners milling around, going in and out of the Snake, and other people, all kinds of people stopping out front to talk , cabs pulling up and discharging patrons, and sometimes when the entrance door was held open for a while the overflow of talk amd glasses and cash registrars from inside would invade this impromptu stage. An early Spanish American mission must have been very much like the inside of the Green Snake with masonry walls, some structural wood visible, oak furniture, and wrought iron fixtures here and there in just the smallest amount. The lighting was minimal with no hint as to where it came from; it could have come from candles off in an alcove or hidden by one of the pillars that served to hold the rest of the building up.

      If you lived in San Francisco during the Sixties you may have been walking around North Beach on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon without much on your mind except what a strange and exciting place this was and, noticing the green snake on the door, came in and ordered a scotch and soda which I may have served you in my customary pleasant manner causing you to comment on the lovely fall weather. And as more people came in on that Sunday or Saturday afternoon you may have elected to have had another scotch and perhaps a third . Soon you might have gotten up and went outside to find that it was dark out now and that a walk through the artificially lit sections of Broadway and Chinatown with two or three drinks in you always served as stimulus for the imagination.

      That’s how it was back in the Sixties. But then came the Seventies and the war was over, and Watergate, and the energy crisis and everything started to blur. There was a great distortion. The vision was lost. It seemed the poor and destitute were growing in number. And this after The New Deal, The New Frontier, and The Great Society. Somehow with all the various assimilations of great intentions society had had a short fall. The impressions of mankind for centuries were invalid. A New Beginning was being called for and the anger and despair of the people at having their lives once again thrown into disarray was rampant. I could see it in my customers at the Green Snake. They would quarrel with each other and fist fights were often the solution. My benign apothecary of good sentiment was becoming a diseased organism. And when the quiet bloom of the dream of a wonderful land finally died, I went home to Allentown, Pennsylvania where I took a job as a high school history teacher Oddly enough, I have since been asked to be the chairman of the Teachers-Parents Committee on Alcohol. I told the principal I was uniquely qualified having worked for a green snake in San Francisco, to which he simply raised his eyebrows and said thank you and that I could leave now.

Copyright JJW

WHERE IS THIS PLACE CALLED VIET NAM

WHERE IS THIS PLACE CALLED VIET NAM

        It is Friday evening and the three story wood frame apartment house
    closes on a group of residents and visitors. We are in Hartford,
    Connecticut. John Kapps, a Bronx native has never seen three story
    wooden apartment houses before. They are dreadful. He is with Dennis O'Rourke
    who is visiting his cousin Mary. She married a guy named Vinny right out of
    college and he set them up in the apartment once he got the job teaching in a
    slum school that paid $6,000 and now they have a baby. Also arriving with
    them is Bob Mearly, a college dropout, the name of which John can not
    pronounce. It is that time of their lives when the three young men are
    Navy buddies.
       Mary, who is happy to see her cousin, serves some wine. It is red
    and rather cheap. They are smiling over the baby. John vows: Never to
    drink only a little wine on Friday evenings. Never to be poor. Never
    to live in Hartford in a wooden frame apartment house.

       When Dennis, Bob, and John went to Chicago one night during their
    stay at Great Lakes Navel Training Center, they went to the shore of
    the lake and urinated. This act put a special pedigree on their union.
    Also in Chicago, Bob taught Dennis and John how to soak a cigar in a
    glass of beer and then smoke it.
       Bob's talents were legion. After drinking all night he could pick
    up a prostitute, spend the night in a flea-bag hotel, and never soil
    his underwear.
       Dennis was from Brooklyn. He had a younger sister who could do an Irish
    folk dance. His grandfather got very excited when she danced. But Dennis
    was poor except for his store of intelligence and knowledge, which was
    much greater than those around him.
       John was full of impressions that filtered deep into his soul from
    the external world. For example, he knew: It was 1964. He had joined
    the Navy a year ago. The Navy had sent him and his friends to missile
    school. He and his friends drank a lot. Having only one or two glasses
    of wine caused one's ears to warm and further caused a tingling sensation
    in the temples and cheeks which was not a pleasant experience. Better
    to drink a lot and avoid these issues. With all the new things he was
    learning, John would one day be a worldly philosopher.
       Missile school starts with the fundamentals. There is an atom. It has
    electrons in orbit and when they jump between orbits it takes energy to do
    that, but also a package of energy known as a gamma ray may be created.
    And missile school talks about x-rays, which are no more than electrons.
    The missile technician having learned about electrons can now apply
    that knowledge to tubes and transistors which make the missile go. The
    missile is guided by a computer which gets its fixings from the stars.
    John took the learning seriously. Dennis was pissed off because he wanted
    to study poetry. Bob couldn't have given a shit.
        The three friends had stopped in Hartford on their way back from
    missile school. Many years later John would return to Hartford. Every
    wooden frame house with wooden porches and clothes hanging outside to dry
    reminded him of Vinny and Mary although by then he did not remember their
    names.

       "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was playing at a party John attended while
    home on leave. He could tell a lot of the girls were being extra friendly
    to him. He was glad he had worn his uniform. Across town Dennis and Bob
    spent the night on the town drinking. The next day they all met in Brooklyn
    then went to Grand Central Station for a train to Philadelphia where they
    stayed at Bob's parent's house. Bob's folks had money and John was
    impressed. He felt: Someday I will have money. Rich people are better
    looking than poor. Thick pile carpet isn't bad. Having guest rooms was
    a practical device which he would consider sometime in the future.
    The boys then traveled by car to San Francisco where a ship with the
    missile they had learned about in school was waiting for them.
   
       Sometime after John joined the Navy a war broke out that threatened
    to involve him in a big way. John was upset. He didn't like swimming in the
    ocean and he didn't like sharks. Recruiters had not talked war. When he
    questioned Dennis about the prospects of war, Dennis became mad and said he
    wanted to go to college and study English Literature. The popular song
    "Downtown" was playing. Bob was reading a war novel in his rack while
    smoking a cigar, certainly against regulations. Thinking about the war,
    John remembered that 70 percent of all sailors could not swim and many
    were allergic to wool. So he wrote a letter to his girlfriend in Milwaukee
    and then rewrote it so he could send a copy to his girl back home.

    Dear (fill in the blank),
       Some of the guys on this missile frigate can't swim. When they come
    back from the beach they throw up in the head. My rack is right outside
    the head. Where is this place called Viet Nam.

                    Love,
                    John

   
       In Japan he became quite drunk. He had left the frigate at noon and
    was drinking whiskey sours in a night club by 2PM after having had a few
    beers at the Enlisted Man's club. At 9PM he offered a bar girl the
    required sum and left to go to her room. This was in a house where
    other people were engaged in similar pursuits. John started to frolic
    with the other girls, chasing them in the hallway. The girls, with the
    assistance of their men folk, subdued him and, because he had passed out
    by now, dumped him in a bathtub. When he awoke he was getting off a bus
    and was greeted by a fence which he determined to be enclosing a military
    installation. Gathering his wits, John decided to follow the fence perimeter
    for surly all military fences lead somewhere. Eventually.
       In the dim light of the morning he reached the guard house. His walk
    had revived him. The MP on guard returned John's salute with a brisk wave
    to come through the gate. Below deck the chow line had started to form.
    During breakfast John engaged himself in conversation: I feel like I was
    on the floor of a bus. I don't remember having sex with anyone. Hope
    I don't get the clap. Shit! I still have my wallet! Then he went aft to the
    berthing area and talked with Dennis and Bob. They had stayed aboard, opting
    to save their money for Hong Kong, a preferred liberty call over Japan.
    John could not plan that far ahead. His needs were more immediate.

          Aquarius pours into the San Diego morning from La Jolla and the gulf and
    from Catalina. Sharks swim near the surface feeding in the ocean kelp. The
    land most likely to slip into the ocean and become the next Atlantis can not
    be adequately described by any of its parts. Moses Malone and the Houston
    Rockets are somewhere in the future. Ishi is dead and so is the
    anthropologist who courted him. The surface of the moon is being readied for
    the Lunar Landing Module which will bring the Flintstones into the space age.
    Grumman workers are fashioning the Land Rover out of a hundred million hours
    of overtime spent sleeping at their desks and stamping inspection papers.
    Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" is a big hit and, as usual, wild dogs are a
     continuing threat.  Many of the country's soldiers and sailors read the "Stars and Stripes"
    to find out how many stars they can get on their expedition medals. Dennis has
    gone to the ship's library in an attempt to locate Viet Nam in an atlas. He
    had an idea it was in the mid-east but the chaplain who administered the
    library said it was south of Japan and added it was, to a great extent,
    a Catholic country.
       "I know not any Viet Nam. Only a map in an atlas. Light green, washed-out
    orange, yellow."
           So he asked Bob, "Why are we in Viet Nam?"
           Bob held the political savy in the group. He bit down on his cigar and quoted
    from the little red Mao book he picked up in Hong Kong: To act without
    understanding and do so habitually without examination, following certain
    courses all their lives without knowing the principles behind them - this is
    the way of the multitude.
        Thus assured, Dennis went out on the fantail and smoked a joint.

   
       As they steamed toward their destination in the black limitless infinity
    of the South China Sea the following conversation could be heard on the
    intercom system any given evening:

        Bridge - Fantail
        Fantail - Bridge. Go ahead.
    Sea bats off the stern. Lots of them.
    Sea bats?  Sir, Fantail reports sea bats off the stern.
    Bridge - After steering. What's sea bats?
    Quite on the line.
    What time is it?
    Half past a cow's ass.
    Shit.
    Fantail - Engine room. What's for breakfast?
    Foreskins and toast.
    Bug juice.
    The Navy sucks.

   
              In the opening moments of the Viet Nam war a Philipino bar girl slept with
    Bob Mearly, a college dropout from Philidelphia. Bob enriched her with some of
    his genetic information. He felt big this way. When it came to the dissemination
    of genetic information Bob was never guilty of a look backwards, never doubting
    the teloscopic power of evolution to bring all men together in the form of a super
    hybrid that would ward off disease, be more white than brown, and have oval eyes.
    He found it difficult to believe that Dennis and John rarly did well on the beach.
    Of course, when it came to sex, you had to do it for yourself. This gave him an
    opportunity to excel. The activity so pleased him, it topped his "to do" list just one
    notch below drinking.
       John was reading in a Time magizine about people in San Francisco who laid around
    the streets wearing flowers in their hair. He thought maybe that's what he would
    be when he got out of the Navy. But first he would have to get out of the Navy.
    Also, he thought of becoming a mercenary, but he hated war and killing people: If
    only I could be a mercenary without shooting nobody. Imagine me wearing a barret
    and holding my machine gun walking into some second rate country of slobs with
    all the women going crazy over me and I would let them all live because I'm
    Catholic and believe in Jesus. Maybe I am Jesus. In fatigues. The Holy Ghost.
    Nobody can shoot me. The peasant's bullets go right through me and I, with my
    machine gun blazing, start to ascend rapsodically over the desert. Or jungle.

       Dennis received a letter from home one day telling him that his sister had been
    raped. He told his two friends about it over drinks at the Subic Bay EM club. John
    got very upset. He said: Why did they have to tell you that depressing stuff while
    we're out here right in the middle of a war? Don't they got no feelings? I mean
    here we are risking our lives and you got to get depressing news from home.
           Bob meanwhile ordered them more salty dogs. Dennis made an oath to kill the
    bastard. Bob offered to help and John, buckling to peer presure, swore his allegience.

        In Manilla Bob showed them how to enjoy the European style restaurants while watching
    the activities in the Plaza on a Sunday afternoon. Manilla was exciting. Taxi drivers
    carried hand guns and one could see a shoot out now and then on the various side streets.
    Many of the sailors were afraid to have sex in Manilla for fear of really bad clap.
    Bob didn't let this bother him and when they got back to the frigate they had to lance
    his prick to get the puss out. John vaguely remembers getting drunk with someone
    from the US embassy. Dennis did not go ashore because, he said, he had a headache
    but really he wanted to be alone. The water of Manilla Harbor was muddy brown
    and possesed of millions of floating worms. Why go ashore?

        John often felt he was dying. When his missile frigate was in the middle of the
    ocean he calculated the distance to the nearest land and concluded he was as good as
    dead. To ease his concerns he would pester the quartermaster to give him the ship's
    position. This then was discussed with other crew members.

        Where are we?
        We're half way out.
        Half way out where?
        Our here. See?  John produced sketches of the Pacific Ocean
        and the South China Sea.
        What's this?
        Okinawa.
        And this?
        Taiwan.
        Taiwan? Hear that's good liberty.
        Hell it is. Island's crawling with giant cockroaches and rats.
        How'd you know?
        Been there.
        How's the women?
        No women. Only on the Air Force base.
        We going to Taiwan?
        No. And you don't wanna go there.

       John would have appreciated any port as long as he was safely connected
    to a pier and could go ashore at will. The ship stopped at many ports. As
    the number increased John lost focus. His past was lost to him and he became
    not unlike a crab crawling over the ship and ports of call. The metamorphosis
    had struck Dennis and Bob as well, although Bob did not seem to mind that
    the fluid which once lubricated his brain was becoming quite something else.
       At night they heard the sea bats fly by the hull of the ship. Half inch
    steel between them and the sea, the steel itself losing to the damaging
    tactics of the sea, rusting asway as they, like birds tucked away for the night
    around some city block, went to sleep, every one of them fastened to the hull,
    which was rusting away always. All things give to it. The ocean is a primal
    force. All things breathing and alive support this assumption.
      
       Reports from Viet Nam continued. McNamara had drawn a line through the
    country; a considerable moment in the war. Dennis went into the ship's
    library to determine where that line put him. The chaplin said not to worry -
    it was mostly a Catholic country. No sooner had the frigate arrived at the
    next port of call and Dennis went a little crazy and stabbed a native
    during a skirmish. He was put into the ship's brig and the ship was asked to
    leave port. Bob said he had taken a course in psychology and he had a theory
    Dennis was acting out his frustrations. Dennis did his brig time and was
    restricted to the ship for the rest of the cruise.
      "How could this be?" thought John. "How could Dennis, obviously a nice guy,
    who wants to study poetry, go out and stab a fellow?: In his confusion John
    wrote a letter to his girlfriends:

    Dear (fil in the blank),
       War is hell. Guys go around stabbing each other. Some guys are drunk
    all the time and we're forever looking for crabs. The harbor waters of
    the ports we visit are all muddy and seem to hold human feces in suspension.
    While we're out here risking our necks, some guy in Washington is drawing
    lines on a map. Shades of Viet Nam. Pink astroids up their noses. Where is
    this place called Viet Nam?
                             Love,
                        John

       
    End of part one
    Go to the beginning of part two


        The silent waters of Viet Nam out of the ship's stacks smoking and lords
    rising on the tops of waves entering a harbor, shading their eyes in the
    bright sun reflected in everything. O where is this place called Viet Nam?
    It is passing under your bow, jumping out of the sea like dolphins playing
    tag. When is this place called Viet Nam? It is now before you even though
    it disappears as you squint at it in the sun.
        Do farm boys from Kansas go to Viet Nam? Is there television? Are
    there many women in the streets? O wait! I see a Coca Cola sign!
        Bob went ashore and had sex with a bar girl. Most of the guys were afraid
    to do this because it was generally known the Vietnamise had every sickness
    known to man. The people seemed to be backwards, living in huts and depending
    on the sea for a living. Most of the sailors were grumpy about pulling
    liberty in what they called a shit hole. Because he could not go ashore,
    Dennis spent his time walking around the ship looking into the water.
    It was clear and sparkling. One could see the bottom. John, knowing Bob had
    slept with one of the native girls tried for himself. He got abusive with
    her and when she protested he threatned her with a knife, probably one just
    purchased from her brother. He was feeling like a big man and thought of
    writing home about his experiences. Knives, girls, Manilla, booze all the time.
    Hong Kong. Japan. This is really living. Only I can't stand the Navy.
    A man has to put up with a lot of crap just to have a good time. Bob agreed.
    Sex and booze in the tropics was the perfect combination to groom the perfect
    life. He realized his engagement to a young lady back home lacked meaning
    in the context of a fuller life well lived and determined to set things
    straight next he arrived in Philadephia.
     
       As the cruise wore on the men of the missile frigate became restless.
    The captain sensed the mood of his men and was relived when he could
    finally set course back to the States. Fifteen days after leaving the line
    they were back in San Diego. Dennis was very excited. He was thinking about his
    sister. Bob gave some thought on how to break with his girlfriend. The
    tattoo of a naked girl on his forearm he got in Hawii might be all he needed.
    Maybe he'd go on about the clap and stuff, just to scare her off. John
    spent his first night back attending all night movie theaters downtown.
       When they went on leave and where back on the East Coast, Dennis found
    out his sister hadn't been raped, but her attacker was anyway sent
    up the river to Camp Beacon. The boys had to put off killing him for now.
    Up in the Bronx, John was trying to reconnect with his old gang, but
    they were into really strange stuff that he could not bring himself to imitate.
    He tried to merge the new John with the old neighborhood by going
    on a three day drunk winding up in Philidelphia at Bob's house. They called
    Dennis and he arrived next morning. Bob's parents had a little party for
    them. Bob introduced his fiance to the boys and took the opportunity to
    tell her to kiss off. She cried a lot, but then thought wiser. The hell
    with Bob. The hell with his friends. The hell with them all.
       After the party they flew cross country to get back to their ship.
    John was close to becoming border line manic depressive. Dennis had
    ripped up everything he had ever writen one morning while in the
    throes of an alcoholic stupor. Bob, couldn't have given a shit. But all
    three knew by then exactly the location of the place called Viet Nam.


    Copyright 2000  JJW
      

        

       

The Prince of Wales

The Prince of Wales

When I was
Woodrow Wilson
with the power of war
under my hat,
my hair turned white
and I could no longer
live second best.

It is as someone else
I do well,
a Jagger or Emerson
is always more
then just me.

& since my freedom stems
from a long line of kings
for now, I'll be
the Prince of Wales.

copyright JJW

Working Class Boys

Working Class Boys

Working class boys
don't be poets,
learn the ways of steel,
apply them to the wheel.

People can not eat words
& your fathers don't shoot birds.
Your backs are what's needed.

Food is gained by moving
one's self in response
to someone's directions,
& working class boys learn
to obey & seek the guaran-
teed minimum.

copyright JJW

Glass

Glass

A piece of glass in the window
between you and me.
Sand heated becomes a question:
what does it mean to be on one side
of silicon gel?
I walk away, enter a train.
surrrender my ticket, but still I'm looking
into space through glass, a very basic substance,
it is inescapable.

An enormous pea floats in a clear glass bowl
of Lake Baikal water.
The Russian Master-At-Arms looks out the window.
People in the streets below
are guided by glass bulbs of electric.
Yet this doesn't tell if glass restricts
or separates; is light or heavy & what best methods
to use for mending.
 
copyright JJW

The Prairie

THE PRAIRIE

       
     National parks were created for wilderness. I saw wilderness once, maybe twice. The Eastern Woodlands. The Western Prairie. Brought to human bondage. The coastal penoplain lost its wild Virginia rose, green snake, half its mammals, and prehistoric people. The bald eagle died and came back. The osprey died and came back. There is clear evidence of rejuvenation. Shale and coal have been taken from Appalachia. There are some horrible scars and even the earth burns.  Some people who love art and nature paint landscapes of Pennsylvania. In Ohio clay is turned into art pottery. There is a connection. Hand blown glass is formed in South Jersey out of quartz and ash.
       Not noticing any of this, three people having breakfast in a chain restaurant talked of hunting mushrooms. Displaced farm people, they had been captured by the force fields of the urban black hole and now had two sticks to rub together, certainly enough  to buy breakfast with the hard charging denizens of Earth City.  Their combined age could have been 180 years. A close inspection of the dirt on their boots and shoes would reveal that the soils were recently brought to the surface through excavation. They had been in the restaurant before. One  waitresses knew  them by name, Bob, Flo, Jimmy. Discussion about the weather was concluded with general agreement as to its particular warmth for springtime. A number of mushrooms had been found. One was very agreeable when eaten. Had Bob said it was red? He looked straightforward when he spoke, not at the friends at his side. They had counter seats.
       Outside, a late April sun was beginning to warm a field separating industrial parks. The grass seemed a variety of wheat grown just as any farmer might grow. Along the edge of the parking lot where their car was parked a disturbed piece of land had promoted the growth of thistle plants. They were tall, green, and taking over. The rains of spring had made it so. Getting into the car all three had the same flash of memory as they observed these plants. It was many years ago. Fields and livestock. Hard work. Family members. They were children playing and the wild flowers grew everywhere. The daydream ended for each with the old "where are they now feeling" which ended quickly enough for they were content having eaten a pleasant breakfast shared with friends and laced with talk of mushroom hunting.
       They drove to the cemetery. It was a small burial ground, started when the prairie was first being cleared. Its place in the sun was flat and higher then all the surrounding landscape. They had been picking dead branches off an azalea planted at the head of Flo's mother's grave when Bob asked to all if there was a reason why the cemetery was so much higher then the rest of the  place. Jimmy said he didn't remember it as having been so much on a hill when he was young.
    "Well, sure not," said Flo. "The plowing all around it took it all away. Just blew it up in the wind, you know." She had not lifted her head nor broke her concentration on some tulips.
     "It just so might be," thought Bob.
     They attended to the graves of other relatives and friends. The morning passed and when they got back into the car they all felt refreshed. It was good to be alive, but it had also been good to be among the old times even though it needed to be recalled, even though it was no longer a part of their lives.
        Back home, Bob paused to talk with his across the hall neighbor.  "It's all gone, you know ."
      "What is," said his neighbor.
      "Why the prairie of course. Blew it away, just like that.  I saw it all today up at the 
     cemetery."
     "Saw what?"
     "All them plowing. Going on for years. It was blown away, no harm meant, but it was 
     gone just like that and probably nobody knowing it was happening."
     "Oh. Sure. You know everything."
     "No, not everything. Just that you and I won't be around forever. Stop by later and I'll 
     show you pictures."
     As the door to his apartment closed behind him Bob was feeling a small sense of loss for times when he was young spent closer to nature. He turned to think of his neighbor. The man had never seen the prairie.

copyright JJW

A Short Taking of Time; A Moment

A SHORT TAKING OF TIME; A MOMENT
                               
In that you asked, I thought I might
And then considered if I should
But not reflexive,
More ponderous I think I am, as if someone walked
Beyond a cave.
Someone who can sometimes see a little daringly
And perhaps occasionally misbehave.
And then you know, I think you do, I said to you
There is a perfect being,
Correct me, but I believe my claim is for this creature
To be you and that that claim in and of itself
Makes small distinction for its own merit
And see nothing to discredit a belief that
You are more than good, but perfect.
And everyone, including you, will fight me on this,
Little wonder, stuffed with egalitarianism as we are,
But this is just to say, that in a random ordering
Of things, some will be more to the perfect than others
And I have placed you above the others.
Is this a father abandoning all reason?
Or is this reason being contrary?
I submit this for your inspection.
For your cabinet draw to be put away.
To be taken out from time to time
And cause you to be reflective.

copyright JJW

The Fence Between the Yard

THE FENCE BETWEEN THE YARDS

“They are beautiful,” my mother would say, pointing to the flowers on the branches of a pear tree seen through our kitchen window. If at the table, Dad would agree with a smile and a nod of his head. The combined action of both parents transmitted to their children a sense of good fortune. The tree grew in our neighbor’s yard and I later in life came to recognize the curving of the branches and the graceful spacing of the flowers as similar to those in Van Gogh’s paintings of apple blossoms and those I am told being further based of Chinese, or Japan, paintings.

 

We were Italian and our neighbors were a wonderful English family, nor should I fail to relate our neighbors off the other side yard were German. A truly cosmopolitan universe in what was considered to be an Italian neighborhood. This in an urban setting, but the true ambiance was one of a house in the middle of a country setting. My parents built up the city soil over the years by adding the ashes from our coal furnace and compost made from kitchen byproducts such as coffee grinds, vegetable stems, and fruit skins. The addition to the soil was such that eventually our side yard was a foot higher than our neighbor's with the pear tree.

 

Those avid gardeners more than made up for any lack of a soil fertility program by giving long hours of detail work to the plants and shrubs which made their eight-of-an acre so pleasurable to observe. Along this border my mother grew lily-of-the-valley and begonia due to the shade. Where the sun began to reach further along the line she had iris and then the roses. Towards the front of the yard, a shrub I think of as the First Holy Communion bush because it was in bloom at the May event of that religious heritage, with blooms of pure white clusters of individual tiny flowers, grew straddling the fence between our yards. This shrub, by the way, is not the bridal shower I have out front in my yard today as this has individual white blooms growing along the stems, not in ball-like clusters. The location is the same, out front by the street and on the same side of the house.

 

Along the fence, all summer long, grew the morning glory. Each summer day I took a keen interest as to which colors of glory would be on display. In the evening I would then be quizzically puzzled as to the morning glory’s propensity to close up and hide its most obvious adornment. In retrospect, this fence between two yards, the people on both sides who so appreciated nature, and the snapshots and snippets of that universe, all provide generous amounts of remembrance of a time and place filled with grace and a more precise awareness of itself. 

Two recent poems

July 29, 2011

The Last Indian Found

Pelham Bay and the last Indian lives 1926.
Hunter Island, Split Rock, along that
tidal shore; found by a boy
who writes him down.

Pelham Bay, the Bronx Indian burial grounds
Morrisania, Old Ferry Point;
not birch bark but dug out canoes,
they paid taxes to the Iroquois.
Knees placed tight to their chins
when laid in shallow graves.

Drinking water, a planting place, a fishing spot,
shelter from invaders -
they lived until we found him,
1926, wild. With stories of the Civil War.


July 28, 2011
                                     The Elders

In the room, in the living room green,
I watch the elders listen to the radio;
a newspaper, a cigar, some clothing mended,
each in an assigned place:
on the sofa by the front window,
in a chair beneath the clock,
and across the room in a corner.
I heard the cuckcoo and played
piano rolls.
They revisited in their minds
the coming over on the White Star Line,
the World Wars, passing through tenements
on their way to the Bronx;
living in the ancient way
mindful of the God they knew.

copyright JJW