Fly-Over Country

July 27 2020

They call this “fly-over country;”

the coastal elites

at 30,000 feet

between L.A. and New York.

Where glancing down

they see the tops of clouds

or a dull expanse of dark,

before returning to some cool Chablis

slipping eye masks on.

While we hear the far-off sound of jets

see con-trails overhead.

But really, couldn't care less

for their striving

status

designer clothes,

hours under tanning lamps

fine cosmetic nose.

Because we have space, trees, neighbours,

a quiet lake

and lots of room for dogs.

No theatre, opera, big-time sports;

just high-school kids in Camelot

some pick-up ball

an oompah band in shorts.

The paparazzi don't bother us.

We like being ignored.

A trifle, I know. I had the idea of riffing on "fly-over country", and this pretty much wrote itself.  Not really a meaningful piece; but kind of fun. ...Not meaningful, except that it celebrates common sense and groundedness,while gently mocking the essential insecurity of those who presume to sneer and judge. (And they do. The very expression – fly-over country – says it all!)

Graffiti

July 26 2020

The long freight train rumbles past,

steel-on-steel

squealing around the curve.

All the boxcars and tankers

are bright with graffiti

and gaudily spray-painted tags,

anonymous artists

all over the continent

compelled to leave their mark.

The compulsion of art,

however impermanent

however nomadic.

Stopped

at the level crossing

I sit at the wheel and watch.

Not a vandalized train

but a beautiful canvas

scrolling past my eyes.

There are currently (July of 2020) Black Lives Matter protests erupting in Portland Oregon. Which is notable in itself, since Oregon is so overwhelmingly white. Most have been peaceful. Some activists have sparred with police, lit fires, broken windows,and spray painted a Federal courthouse with graffiti. Minor damage. Hardly a riot. In politically motivated authoritarian theatre, the Trump administration has marshalled troops from various Federal enforcement agencies (such as Homeland Security, Border Patrol, the Marshal's Office, TSA) – under the pretext of protecting Federal property, and arguing that local authorities are not doing the job – dressed them in unmarked paramilitary outfits, armed them heavily, and set them against the protesters. This has only escalated a peaceful demonstration into violence. Meanwhile, this unauthorized Federal police force is arbitrarily and illegally detaining protesters.

So some see the graffiti as expressions of freedom, individualism, creativity, and beauty. Others see it as a dangerous sign of disorder, lawlessness, and the rule of the mob. A threat to security and stability. Even terrorism! I think this binary really reflects the basic mindset of two worldviews, which in turn is a reflection of the human temperament, as much biological as it is learned: either liberal, tolerant, curious, and open to new experience; or conservative, rigid, and inclined to conformity and order. (Perhaps a binary. On the other hand, and even though I strongly self-identify as liberal and progressive, I find some of both in me. So perhaps better to say a continuum.)

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “graffiti” are those gaudily painted freight trains. They strike me as movable art: colourful, often beautiful, original, and mysterious. Who paints them? Why? Do freight cars stay still that long? Are they reviled by the railways, tolerated, or even secretly celebrated?

Clearly, art is a human compulsion, and anything can become a medium. It seems we can't help ourselves!

A Sleepy Little Town - July 23 2020

A Sleepy Little Town

July 23 2020

But what little town doesn't look sleepy,

driving down the dusty main street

where a rusty awning squeaks

loud enough to hear,

a fat yellow dog

pants in the shade.

Where you're the only car that's stopped

at the only traffic light

you're sure is stuck on red.

Searching for the Interstate

and the exit you missed.

Feeling you should wave back

at the old men

who have claimed their regular bench,

where they shoot the breeze

and keep an eye on things

and complain about what hurts.

Wondering why the street's so wide

they can angle-park on either side

and still have 6 lanes left.

Forgetting that out here

there's more space than people,

and that its founding fathers

foresaw a new Chicago

once the train came through.

Ambitious men

who were builders and boosters

and certain the future was theirs.

And forgetting that this sleepy little place

is like everywhere else.

In the Star-Lite motel.

In the broken bottles

of Johnny Walker

in an alley back of the bar.

Behind the closed the door

when the shades are drawn

in the darkness just before dawn.

Sophisticates, and cosmopolitans

we motor through town

on our way to somewhere else.

Amused

by these folksy people

in their small insular world.

Sleepy, we think to ourselves,

tired by the long drive

and the miles still ahead,

dreaming of home

on the quiet cul de sac

and our own familiar bed.

I was reading a magazine article and was struck by the writer's use of this lazy cliche. How patronizing. As if people everywhere aren't the same: the same frailties, weaknesses, vices. The same pain and suffering. The same dreams and disappointments. And who knows what goes on – big city or small town – behind closed doors and after dark.

Suburban Man

July 21 2020

The machine doesn't cut, trim, clip

slash, hack, cleave,

or even clear.

It mows

down, through, over.

An exercise of force

that subdues the lawn

and renders it compliant.

Ruler straight lines.

A dead even height.

The contrasting greens

between overgrown

and perfectly ordered.

Even the potent sound

that obliterates all else

has a comforting consistency

   . . . the hell with the neighbours.

And the smell of exhaust

mixed with fresh cut grass

has a pleasurable whiff of nostalgia.

How sweet

to see the dandelions fall,

cut down

in yellow sun-kissed splendor,

before they soon transform

into leggy stems

with ghostly halos
of malignant seed. 

How even a powerless man

at the end of a futile week

of pushing paper and taking orders

is able to exert control,

mowing even swathes

of manicured lawn

in a precise pattern

up-and-down the yard.

Suburban man,

in button-down shirt

and matching pleated khakis.

Breaking the Sunday morning calm

in a symbolic act

of passive defiance.

As for me, I'm most likely dressed in old shorts and a torn T-shirt. I'm never up so early (definitely not a morning person!), was never a mindless office drone, and am retired, so no one orders me around. And my machine is electric and I'm far out in the country, where no one else can hear. So mowing the lawn is not at all a passive-aggressive act born of frustration.

Still, I have to admit to enjoying those even rows and a bourgeois sense of accomplishment. Not to mention the sober understanding that I have, at least temporarily, civilized nature on my appointed plot of land. Which, if left on its own, would quickly overgrow, and eventually evict us.

This is the note that accompanied this poem when it was initially sent to my first readers:

Something new. Once again, first draft. This one came so easily (pretty much flowed out of the pen, as you see it here) I have to wonder where it came from. Apparently, some deep unplumbed well of frustration! 

I do know that I've been procrastinating on my lawn cutting  (or at least the weed bed I call a lawn), so this is likely part of where it came from. 

And there is, admittedly, the fact that cutting the grass can be very satisfying:  a simple contained task with a hard, measurable, and very apparent outcome. 

First Impressions

July 19 2020

First impressions.

Which should by all rights be singular;

once

at a glance

first time.

Like a small swift dinosaur

flitting over some creek bed

of soft receptive clay,

a fleeting impression

of bird-like feet,

indelibly fixed 
for countless millennia.

Or some spectacular bloom

from the lost age of giants

that looks almost alien to us,

buried by hot acidic ash

as soon as it fell.

It depends on the passing mood

expectation

the carefully curated self.

On memory

salience

gradations of light.

How I wish I was better

at blank slates

and the fine art of forgetting.

Less reflexive

more accepting

a generous judge.

Like a paleontologist

conserving the past

I remember when we met.

When we both were young

and easily impressed,

not yet invested

in a future life.

I still see you that way,

beautiful, giddy, guileless

in that long peasant dress

and wild nimbus of hair.

The smile

that lit up your eyes,

the sun

in its full summer flowering.

A good first impression

that has lasted, so far

for all of time.

By Our Very Presence

July 18 2020

Poke the fire

with a long stick

and watch the flames flare,

a shower of sparks

pour-off in the wind.

Faces flicker red

in the radiant glare,

eyes brightly stare

fixed on the fire.

We gather close

under clear black sky,

our fronts slowly roasting

while our backs are exposed

to the cold and dark.

Until it's finally left to burn itself out,

as cool night air

settles heavily down.

Tents zip shut

someone's started to snore,

a few people talk

in barely audible voices.

Tomorrow

the sun will shine, the lake will beckon,

but for now, bodies rest

burrow-in to stay warm.

While restless minds

go on exploring.

Dreaming dreams we won't remember,

or lying awake in the dead of night

as mosquitoes swarm

and embers die.

But no matter how hard we try

we are clumsy intruders

in whatever there is left of the wild;

by our very presence

by what's left behind.

A circle of rocks

and some charred wood,

the trampled plants

where we walked and stood.

And whatever small scraps

we will overlook

in the controlled chaos of morning.

This began with a simple image: a group of people encircling a fire in the woods at night as a great shower of sparks pours off into the darkness. So I set it down, then called back to some of my experiences of camping. The ending wrote itself. How predictable. What a familiar trope for me: man in nature; man the intruder, who only degrades and destroys.

You Can Tell By The Eyes

July 15 2020

They say you can tell by the eyes.

The mouth, composed in its rictus smile.

The too-tight handshake

held for too much time.

The clammy palm

that puts you in mind

of fast food

and hair product.

But when you look up

into those two dead eyes beneath hooded lids

there's no mistaking the truth.

The con-manning grifter

the scammer and trickster

the hustling chiseller

who would swindle his mom.

They say the eyes

are a window into the soul.

But what about those lost souls

who are hollow and shameless,

have made a fine art

of serving only themselves?

They also say

we are bad at discerning lies

that trust is our default.

But there is no disguising the emptiness

behind the counterfeit

the phony mask.

So look a stranger in the eye

to measure the man.

Who can't laugh at himself

or feel your pain.

Who may have been born that way

or made by circumstance

or both.

Whom you sometimes glance

in the bathroom mirror

at the start of a bad day.

Or its end;

sweaty and soiled and frazzled

from the world out there

the maddening day-to-day.

This wasn't going to be a political poem, but any discerning reader will see the influence of Donald Trump: who is the ultimate conman, malignant narcissist, and likely psychopath. Or maybe, with the reference to hair product, the equally oleaginous Donald Trump Jr. While the dead eyes with the hooded lids definitely belong to Trump's reptilian adviser Stephen Miller, an equally soulless and culpable careerist and enabler.

But I think it may be more about how the world can leave us temporarily jaded, cynical, hard.

And perhaps, in this age of Corona, I was thinking about masks. The real masks, of course. But also the masks we make ourselves. Because it's true about insincere smiles. It's true about eyes. And it's true about our default to the truth. We can be easy marks. But if you have any self-respect, it's still better to be the victim than the culprit.

And Tell Them What It's Like Here

July 14 2020

The traffic ebbs and flows

but never stops

on the multi-lane expressway.

Pinpoint cars

emerge from the far horizon,

the vanishing point

where lines of sight converge.

An endless stream of cars

appearing out of nowhere,

as if somehow conjured

out of nothing at all.

People going about the business

of their busy inscrutable lives,

doing who knows what

going who knows where

all times of day and night.

Two processions of cars

rocketing past each other

in a blast of wind and noise,

coming and going

as if their trips cancelled out.

Then shrinking into the distance

until they soon disappear

at opposite ends of the earth.

An inexhaustible river of cars

with their anonymous inhabitants

endlessly circling the planet,

as if forever trapped

on a Mobius strip of highway,

no terminus
rest-stop
or off-ramp.

As if our lives amounted

to zero sum.

As if there were no purpose to travelling,

and we could just as well

have called ahead

and told them what it's like here.

Leaving that long ribbon of concrete

baking in the sun.

Where deer will graze along the shoulders

which have gloriously overgrown.

Leathery old turtles

will lumber to a stop

to bask on baking blacktop.

And great armies of ants

will scurry on chemical trails

bearing impossible loads.

But we are not content to sit

quietly at home.

We are bustling, rushed, important

restlessly self-absorbed.

So we pass oncoming cars

eyes facing forward

enclosed in our bubble of glass,

going down the road

always heading somewhere else.

Hoping life will be better there
hoping to find ourselves.

A first reader was confused by the title. (maybe a first ...but not a sufficiently close reader!)

Here's my response:

A line in the poem. One I thought was key. Everyone going someplace someone else just vacated. Maybe it would make more sense if we just phoned ahead to each other and did each other's business! It reinforces the zero sum and infinite loop ideas. The sense of futile busyness.

Also, as a title, I like it because of the inscrutability and misdirection. Makes you want to read the poem to see what's up.

I added the final two lines several days after writing and posting this. (As well as the "restlessly" in what had previously been the closing stanza.)  I wanted to get at the fallacy of the "geographic cure":  this idea that if we change where we are, if we keep moving on, we will satisfy some unmet need or find a way to heal. That we can reinvent ourselves simply by going outward and  changing our surroundings, rather than looking inward and changing ourselves. And how being in motion can fool us into thinking we are making progress. 

Sick Room

July 10 2020

The sick room smells of stale air

and bitter pills

and a fruit basket spoiling,

the strong bleach

of hospital sheets

that may have gotten soiled.

Of foul breath

with the fetid scent

of a bad liver failing.

Of corrupted lungs

a coated tongue

and a body slowly wasting.

And still

the unmistakable funk

of old man smell

that persists no matter what.

Instead of big windows and fresh air

there are overhead fluorescents

one small anemic vent.

Where it's consistently over-heated

and disagreeably dry.

Although not so much for the dying,

who are always so chilled to the bone

they feel they'll never get warm.

So when the cool bloodless body

is wheeled discreetly out

then quickly whisked away

will the stench of death remain?

Despite the freshly made bed

and sharp chemical scent

of hospital disinfectant?

For us, it will forever be there.

Because we can't forget the death bed

and the room we spent so much time.

The final strained breath

and the last words of the dying,

then that brief moment of silence

suspended in the air.

As if that momentary pause

was composed of its own small molecules,

a long relieved breath

we could all deeply inhale.

My dog is very sick, and this elicits thoughts of death. Which was the last subject I set out to tackle. I just felt the need to write – something, anything – to get some momentary distance from my distress.

As I often do, I look for inspiration in others' poems, and so turned to the Poetry Foundation website. Under “Collections”, the highlighted item was – most coincidentally -- “Poetry of Sickness, Illness, and Recovery.” There was a Billy Collins poem among the selections: Sick Room. Which struck me, under the circumstances, as an idea as good as any – despite my reservations – I might riff on. This poem is the result. 

I think the final two lines are particularly telling. Because while this natural response might elicit feelings of guilt, it's perfectly understandable: we are bereaved when someone close to us dies, but also relieved that they have been released from their suffering. And especially with something like dementia, when the person we know them to be effectively died well before their actual death. 

Here's a link to the Billy Collins piece:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=41856

Farm to Table

July 9 2020

Tomato season,

and the local bounty has appeared in the stores

like an annual rite of passage.

Field grown

in the long days of our short summer

red and plump and redolent.

I tried to grow tomatoes once.

But between my neglect, the bugs, and the vagaries of weather

they were hard and small and sparse.

So my gratitude to the farmer.

Who, I suspect, is probably some conglomerate

who assembled the land

to avoid paying taxes
as well as maximize their profits.

Where undocumented workers

who speak mostly Spanish

cultivate and harvest the crop.

Or where clever machines

wheel up and down the rows,

so nothing is ever touched

by human hands.

Which I refuse to believe,

stubbornly sticking

to my bucolic image of the family farm,

sturdy people

who are salt of the earth

and take pride in what they do.

Who pick together

and lovingly assemble their vegetable boxes

and wooden baskets of fruit.

Row upon row

of juicy tomatoes

that were grown close to home,

ripening in the sun

and smelling of mother earth.

This typically happens here in August. As it has every year I can remember. The tomatoes are often sold in those light wooden baskets, and you want to be sure to pick through them to see if the bottom layer is bad. I used to absolutely love this time of year: tomatoes that actually tasted and smelled like the real thing.

Except they haven't, lately. They seem so much more like the industrial tomatoes we get trucked in from California and Mexico the rest of the year. We nostalgically imagine the family farm; but really, how many small farms are left? They can't compete. They've been forced to sell.

Tomatoes genetically engineered or bred for transport and storage and efficient growth; not for taste or smell. We are addicted to cheap food. We get what we pay for.