Antebellum Machines

July 26 2011

Before Elisha Graves Otis

perfected the elevator

  —  safety-brake, counter-weight

a well-appointed box  — 

there were no skyscrapers, skylines,

no race to the top.

When air-conditioning, refrigeration

were not.

Before Clarence Birdseye’s frozen peas,

tender fruit, out of season.

We fanned ourselves

on wide airy verandas.

All summer long

all the windows unstuck, all the way up,

sleeping cool

in a blossom-scented breeze.

And the screen door’s wooden thud,

flapping open-and-shut

on weakly sprung hinges.

There was no inside/out.

A house was not a fortress,

drawbridge up, windows sealed

shades pulled tight as drums.

No need to adjust,

stepping outside

into a blast furnace

that has you hustling for cover

  —  a shuffling jog

too hot to run.

A young lady

in a cotton dress

on that broad shady veranda

is fanning herself.

She is slightly flushed.
Her skin glows,
lightly brushed
with perspiration,

her even tan

a tawny brown.

With the toasted scent

of salt and flesh

that seems only natural.

And the downy hair on her arms

her delicate neck

sun-bleached blonde.

Who brightly accepts

a long cool glass

of lemonade

or Coca Cola,

slick with condensation.

Smiling up

delighted.

Simple “machines”:  screen doors, verandas, fans.

A long tall glass.

A proper Victorian romance.

In other words, a poem that is shamelessly nostalgic for a world that probably never was.

I obviously have a thing for the southern belle.

And also the word “antebellum”. Which is literally “before the war”  —  US Civil War, that is. A word that has the plangent lightness of a bell; and a slightly arcane sound that evokes for me a simpler time.