By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall (PG)
From my own fields I can hear the band
The high school marching band, oom-pah, oom-pah
From several miles away, with merry songs
and merry cheers around the homecoming bonfire
That was my grandfather’s hayfield in my youth
Before the town and school replaced the past
The shaking baling machine compressing grass
Where the team captain gives his whup ‘em speech
I found a terrapin where the cheerleaders dance
From my own fields I can see my youth
A Geriatric Motorcycle Gang Invades the Bluebonnet Café
The Hearing Aids from Hell Roaring off the Screen
Biker Babushkas High on Geritol
Looking for Trouble and a Clean Restroom
The Wild One Searching for his lost Social Security
Hell’s Angels on Aluminum Walkers
The Thundering Electra Glide in Blue Rinse
Harley Davidson and the COPD Inhaler Man
Dentures Every Which Way and Loose
“What are you rebelling against?”
“What have…wait…it’s coming to me…what have you…dang, I forgot!”
Science Experiments and Pirate Ships
For Gordon, of happy memory, whose death began in Viet-Nam
My boyhood pal’s home is now mostly gone
A concrete slab among some sunburnt weeds
The crumbling front-porch steps still stepped in place
But leading only to memories in the empty air
There where his bedroom laboratory used to be
We traded Heinlein stories and comic books
Experimented with chemicals and radio kits
And planned camping adventures that never were
His father was a widower who didn’t like either of us
But maybe that part of it doesn’t matter now
The Romance of the Boeing 707
“Out on Runway Number 9 / Big 707 set to go” -Gordon Lightfoot
Old Ginsberg wrote that the typewriter was holy
An airport of words for coming and going
On a runway of ribbon, platen, and keys
McKuen might have said it’s a safe place to land
But then came the Boeing 707
Dear Gordon Lightfoot’s silver wings on high
It flew our words and us all over the world
And became for us holy in its own way
The 707 – there was nothing finer
But the last one I saw was a roadside diner
Upon the Return of Artifacts to Wounded Knee
“We hope the spirits are on their way now.” -Richard Broken Nose
A knife, a needle, an arrow, a pair of shoes
Some beads, a shirt, a drum, a tobacco pouch
A little girl’s doll, fragments of a pot
And tools for completing one’s daily chores
They are not artifacts; they are not displays
They are the ordinary necessities of life
Stolen from the dead hands of innocents
To be numbered, indexed, filed, boxed, and mocked
These things are sacred now, part of the Great Dance of Creation
We pray the spirits will come and take them home
Cf. artdaily.com
A Dusty Drum Kit
In a re-sale shop in Huntington, Texas
Fronting for decaying videotapes
And clocks that will never again chime the time
Through tinny mechanical syncopation
A drum set reposes without percussion
An arpeggio of silent despair
Whose cymbals and snare impatiently wait
As do the bass and other impedimenta
For the hand of a youth who has something to howl
The next kid through the door might bell the cat:
“There it is – I will rhythm the truth with that!”
A Tattered Weed
Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 2
Scene i: a lawn chair beneath a shady oak
Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered weed
After my morning’s work, creaking into my chair
And reaching for my iced tea and a book
Sipping on both for a vision of youth
My Hercule Poirot body is made almost young again
By strolling through Arden with Rosalind and Orlando
(Only for a while; they would much rather be alone…)
And then the iced tea tells me of Ceylon
Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered weed
But sometimes – forever young
A Dollar Box of Crayolas®™
I wanted the biggest box of Crayolas
I had to have the biggest box of Crayolas
I could build worlds with the biggest box of Crayolas
I needed that biggest box of Crayolas!
But the wise voice of situational poverty spoke:
“I am not spending a dollar on a box of Crayolas.”
The biggest box of Crayolas is now about four dollars
Allowing for inflation, much cheaper than in ‘55
I should go buy the biggest box of Crayolas
Maybe I can find a Big Chief Tablet®™ to go with it
Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%
“NOT I – NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” -Walt Whitman
On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico
A greasy spoon along the interstate
Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast
And it was very good – no heaves of gas
But Whitman found an errand in some other soul
And sang a different self to California
McKuen rode with me the rest of the way
Breakfast was ninety-five cents; I added a quarter
The waitress was happy, and so were we all
Ford vs Chevy
In an era where everything was either Ford or Chevy
I was an MG roadster
Unreliable
But lots of fun
How is Your Adventure So Far?
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” -Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Even if you are looking up at an I.V. drip
Instead of green leaves and a summer sky
Your adventure is not nearly at an end
Not even in this life – and the next life, wow!
Your childhood joys have never slipped away
That cheesy 45 rpm that graced your first dance
Has not come to the end of its groovy grooves
You’ve still got the happiness, the moves
Your first job, boot camp, university
Riding a big red bus ‘round Piccadilly Circus
Drinking from your canteen on a mountain top
Your first kiss, that evening in Rome – there’s more to come!
Your first car is still parked in the driveway
Waiting to take you where you always meant to go
Look in Thy Glass
Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 3
I look in the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”
They said I favored my mother when I was young
Red hair and freckles, and an impish grin
But later they said I had to become a man
She had her April, and then so did I
And there are Aprils enough for everyone
They are not my Aprils, but they will do
Every April reflects our youth back to us
I look in the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”
I miss my mother
Whistling Past the Graveyard
No one whistles past a graveyard now
Not with the radio on and the windows up
Though in our barefoot childhood long ago
Walking home alone at dusk – we whistled
But there is no need to whistle now
The cemetery is not a place of spooks and haints
But of those childhood friends with whom we walked
Past our ancestors to the swimming hole
No one whistles past a graveyard now
Because those whom we love are silent there
LogoSophia Magazine 