_______________________________
ON THE LIMBIC ARC OF TIME
For Liberty
This three-month wheaten cairn’s old soul
whose middle name might be Cajole
has sniffed out all my tick-tock past.
She’s stopped the clock. Time’s far surpassed
by all she does to entertain —
to coach my heart and limbic brain —
with capers played throughout the day
at which I am her protégé.
CADET HOME FOR SUMMER VACATION
Temporary wartime housing, in 1942, in a cottage
by the jetty in Venice, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In Memory of E.T.P., and G.F.P. the Cadet.
Just off the bus from military school
he dropped his bag down. “Wow! My throat is dry!
The heat here’s awfully bad.”
“It’s almost cruel,”
Mom said. “The water, too. Will putrefy
your stomach. Sulphur. Smells like rotten eggs!
Bottled is here . . . . Clean glasses . . . . Satisfy
your thirst.”
“You must be pulling both my legs
about he water.”
“No, it’s really yuk —
truly, I promise you. Pure sulphur dregs.”
He eyed her narrowly. “I’ll try my luck.”
He clutched a glass and filled it to the brim.
One gulp, and sputtering, he bent to chuck
it up, right in the sink . . . . “That’s really grim!
You do not lie. At school, everyone lies . . . .
Got gritto? I’ll clean up, then take a swim.”
CALLING ME HOME
In Memory of G.F.P., 1927-2000.
I roused (alarm not set) without a start.
How deep my sleep! My middle name’s “Relax.”
A cosmic, tranquil, dreamy parallax
of feeling slips away and flies apart . . . .
In fragrant morning air, I spot bold hart
outside my window locking splendid racks.
Vermillion hills host sun behind their backs
cajoling sky’s zodiacal light, “Depart . . . .”
Yesterday, golf with Gunby. Rode a cart.
Shot under par on every hole . . . ! Jazz Sax
at Nineteenth Hole was cool. Good beer, talk, snacks,
delicious dinner too, served
à la carte.
But that, while great, did not call home my heart
as did this feeling dream,
Monsieur Descartes.
NOTE: Parallax is “the angular difference in direction of
a celestial body as measured from two points on the earth’s orbit”
(Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed.) — meaning, here, a
subtle, big-picture paradigm shift.
ESCALATOR UP TO BOYS’ AND MEN’S
Burdines Department Store, Miami, Florida. Summer, 1941.
His mother’s dearest friend, who’s Mrs. Hughes,
looks down at him and says, “We’ll buy new shoes!”
She quickly clasps his hands in hers. They pour
through Burdines’ brass-framed glass revolving door
and wedge themselves into a ‘stair’ at PENS,
the Escalator Up to BOYS’ and MEN’S.
“New shoes and lunch will chase your blues away.”
(Lunch? With his breakfast eggs like lumps of clay . . . ?)
Jammed on the skinny tread against the base
board crack as it slips by, there is no place
to stand that does not drag his right foot’s sneak.
He feels the tug and hears it rub, squeak-squeak.
They rise and rise, their tread now fourth beneath
Boys’ Level. There he eyes bright knife-like teeth
gobbling treads between the ceiling and the floor.
His right foot twists and dives — he can’t ignore
it — captured by the vise-like baseboard crack —
an ambush on his toes and foot! Attack!
He pulls and yanks his foot with all his power,
pressing the rail — the crack will soon devour
his foot! It’s stronger. Pops his knee. A flash:
Those teeth! They’ll slice and chomp him up, just hash!
Wild terror paralyzes him. It seems
his lungs collapse. He’ll suffocate. He screams!
Bellowing, Mrs. Hughes cries, “Help us!
Help!”
The knife-like teeth gnash on, by squeal and yelp,
and burp bad breath like smoke from burning shoes.
How many kids, minding their P’s and Q’s,
has it sliced up and munched down for its lunch?
I’ll knock its teeth out with a mighty punch!
IT STOPS . . . ! He clings to the rail with both arms.
His legs twitch. Mrs. Hughes, her bracelet charms
all tinkling, hugs him. She smells bitter-sweet.
Three ladies and a balding man compete —
untying his torn sneaker’s snarled-up knot.
They smell like jasmine blossoms, the whole lot.
Baldy says, “Easy, now!” He pulls . . . . “Hooray!”
They gently peel his cotton sock away.
He sees his piggies. They are red and blue.
Baldy asks, “Can you wiggle one or two . . . ?
Now can you wiggle all those toes?” He can.
“And can you take a step or two, young man?”
Both hands are leaden, shaking still with fear.
His legs, like jiggly Jell-O, quake so queer!
He limps across the rug on blue-bruised toes,
scuffing the sneak still on, in to-and-froes.
He sees the jasmine ladies cheek to cheek
still wrestling with the escalator’s sneak.
Now Baldy fits new sneaks. To see his bones,
he X-rays them. He speaks in undertones.
His smile seems weird beneath odd darting eyes.
“For you. They’re free, from Burdines Store.” He sighs.
Baldy speaks to Mrs. Hughes, ear to ear.
Her voice is dropping. It’s too soft to hear . . . .
(But wait!) He just makes out her throaty yelp.
She’s saying, “I had hoped new shoes would help —
help him get over it. So much for plans . . . !”
She takes, in both her hands, that Baldy man’s,
then, one by one, each jasmine lady’s hand,
now his — and says, “Shall we eat lunch, as planned?”
His jiggly Jell-O muscles crash — and melt.
Not hungry, he nods Yes. He tugs his belt.
She’s now his lifeline. He won’t eat, just sit,
while Mother, in Oklahoma, stays a bit . . . .
Two weeks at most, Mrs. Hughes had said, sad,
not berry pick . . . — just berry-ing your dad.
NOTE: Shoe sales technology in the early 1940's utilized
the shoe-fitting fluoroscope X-ray pedestal by which the wearer and the
salesperson (and parent) could see the fit of feet and bones inside a
shoe. In the 50's it ceased to be used due to risk of radiation
overexposure.
WITH QUARKS AND MORE?
In memory of L.S.J., early aviator and author, 1904-1941.
You felt hotels were lonely for the soul
but necessary for the body’s rest
despite the DC-3's sweet cruise control.
(“High-pocket” legs like yours grew tired and stressed
from being folded up beneath the yoke
that flew that sleek new ship — you simply pressed
the Auto Pilot, stood up, and awoke
them, tingling pins and needles, with a few
deep knee bends which restored their strength, like oak.)
Layovers, nights outside Miami, you
would tune in H.B. Kaltenborn to hear
him read world news in panoramic view.
You’d sleep and wake refreshed, renewed, mind clear,
to write for several hours, perhaps on men’s
adventure yarns, perhaps on
High Frontier.
It was the writing which best served to cleanse
your heart and mind and legs of their fatigue.
But even that could not make full amends
to your young body under its blitzkrieg —
monoxide in the early days’ prop-wash,
scorched airport coffee, pork-fat’s charred intrigue.
At length your pancreas lost its cool panache
and could not fight the smoldering red-hot coal
that shrank you up in your great mackintosh.
Consciousness, Inner Eye of body’s soul,
directing all you do, called you to soar
up from Earth’s cloud-swept deep blue watering hole . . . .
Where does your soul’s heart dwell? With quarks and more,
deep in our Zero Point Field’s astral realm?
Would seem so — greeting you beneath my snore.
