“The feet of people walking home
With gayer sandals go…”
Sunday morning towards dawn,
surly little town
snuggles up to your house –
halfway up and down
a street on a hill
that joins the highway and the factory mill
on the muddy
river bank
where we would swim
in summer
(parents found out –
a bummer…
knew by the shoes –
my God they stank).
‘Bout a quarter ‘til five,
paper truck arrives.
“Chopin! Time to get up!”
Words like little knives
to nudge me from sleep,
aroused from visions half a dozen dreams deep.
That’s OK –
the weekend’s on.
Practice my hurling
talents,
pester the dogs –
a challenge
getting it done
this side of dawn.
Town apportions itself
into seven routes.
Seven rowdies descend
from suburban chutes.
A good hour’s stroll.
But first I sit and wrap them each in a roll.
Fingers blacken
with the print.
Ponder my quarter
mainstay –
video games
at Jamesway.
How will I spend
my monthly mint?
Almost half after five.
Bundle’s on the floor.
Fling it over my neck
and I’m out the door.
I leap like a frog.
Old Yostie threatened that he’ll let out his dog
if I’m not
there on the dot.
What did she say,
that lady?
“Give you a tip
next pay day –
try not to whack
my flower pot.”
Breakfast – Fruit Loops or Chex.
Give my pal a buzz.
Where and when should we meet?
Best friend and my cuz.
I live on the street
that holds the river where the villages meet.
You live up
that slope of hill.
Shoveling snow
in winter,
tramping through woods
out hinter.
Suffering most
when you were ill.
Tommy!
Would you have turned out slim or brawny?
Are the angels
on parade?
Tommy,
is it a place with milk and honey,
Ovaltine
or lemonade?
In the sky,
is there a sun
which has such an earth?
Near that sun,
is there an earth
which has such a town?
On that earth,
is there a town
which has such a street?
In that town,
is there a street
which has such a house?
We bike up to school.
We smoke the bully’s stash and call him a fool,
then we cough
and climb a tree,
heckle the dumb old
fat man.
Eric and Dave
read Batman.
Steve has his eye
upon the sea.
Then back to the house
to check the trap upstairs…we’ve captured a mouse!
“Wanna glue
my model plane?
“Missing a part –
be careful!
Check out the new
Deep Purple.
Smoke on the Water…
cool refrain!
“Let’s watch some TV.
They’re playing Ultraman at quarter past three,
then the Flintstones
on at four.
“Later we’ll grab our
race cars,
get out our Star Wars
lasers,
checkers or else
the Ouija board.
“And then after dark,
we’ll take our flashlights and return to the park,
search for worms
and ride the swings,
climb up the fire pole
and
monitor UFO’s
and
talk about ghosts
and other things.”
Tommy!
Although I’ve not a lot of money
in my dwelling
in Taipei –
Tommy,
oh how I’d like to buy that funny
little town
in old PA!
* * *
Towards the afternoon’s end
of my later youth,
with my papers and books
annotating Truth,
I walk up the road,
a thousand cities from my former abode,
on a somewhat
steeper hill.
Earning my pay
by talking,
making them laugh
and chalking
down on the board
this lesson’s drill.
Now and then it’s a drag,
mostly it’s okay.
Like that paper route stuff –
often you can play.
The kids are a blast,
and frequently they make me think of the past.
“Did we have
such filthy minds?”
Comic books worse
than we had
cause them to think
(and see) bad.
Internet filth…
and other kinds.
Funny. Who would have guessed,
mimicking Bruce Lee,
there’d rear one of our heads
somewhere in the East –
the East of our dreams.
“Did Scottie send you there on Enterprise beams?”
Ha! I read
you loud and clear!
No. I’m afraid
it’s more like
riding uphill,
no headlight,
popping the chain
in seventh gear.
In a year or two more,
who may you have been?
Willy Wonka perhaps?
Huckleberry Finn?
I wish I could teach
you all about what must be quite out of reach
to a boy
of fourteen years –
Hegel and Kant,
Fellini,
Dickinson’s fly,
my genie,
Beethoven’s curse
and microbeers!
Wonder what are the tunes
playing in your loft.
Being’s inner remove –
is it loud or soft?
And are you aware
that I inhale the eastern Orient’s air?
“People mountain,
people sea” –
wall to wall men
and women,
hanging their socks,
their linen –
20th-story
balcony.
Tommy!
Does Heaven freeze or is it balmy?
Is it one
eternal day?
Tommy,
is there a way for you to call me?
Do you mean
the words I say?
In the sky,
added to one
does one come to two?
Does that sun
gather up green
from yellow and blue?
On that earth,
is there a clock
to monitor wars?
Is that town
peppered with drunks
and plastered-up stores?
Is that street
paved with their sighs,
their hopes and their dreams?
Is that house
noisy with boys
engaging in schemes?
Do grandparents age?
And do the highways there stretch way off the page?
Are there woods
in which to roam?
Are there a thousand
local
legends of each odd
yokel?
Would they comprise
a hefty tome?
And is there a store
where kids can go and spend a dollar or more
on the latest
baseball cards?
Houses where kids
assemble,
elderly neighbors
grumble?
Pools in the back
and well-trimmed yards?
“Yeah, that would be great
if we could get there by a quarter to eight.
Trade you five
for Willie Mays.”
Watch from the hill
the sundown.
“When it gets dark
we’ll run down.”
End of the first
of fresher days.
The next day we’d meet
with happy sandals on our happier feet,
as imagined
in the poem.
Mounting the church,
the steeple –
look at the town,
the people!
Wave to them all –
they’re going home!
Tommy!
Is it as cloudy as it’s sunny?
Does it catch
each slanted ray?
Tommy –
oh do you ever look upon me
from that deep
celestial bay?
Tommy!
Although I’ve not a lot of money
in my dwelling
in Taipei –
Tommy,
oh how I’d like to buy that funny
little town
in old PA!