What is important?
What is necessary?
What can wait?
Where do the steps lead?
Who will walk them?
Will they care?
Do I care?
I do.
I will tend to them.
But first things first.
SOMETIMES WINTER IS SNEAKY and rides in quietly on the coattails of fall, cooling the evenings ever so slightly until one morning, there’s snow hiding between blades of grass. But on this particular Saturday, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the wind blew hard and cold from the west, declaring an end to the mythos of the endless summer, and languid, hopeful nights.
copyright 2015, joseph e bird
An afternoon in a café
a drink on the scarred wooden table
watching the life on the sidewalk
laugh and whisper
and glance with that look.
Copyright Joseph Bird, 2015
This is the next installment of my poetry jag. This was written as a reflection of family trips to the beach. I don’t expect everyone to fully connect, though there might be some resonance for those with similar experiences. I used InDesign to incorporate photos with the text, but couldn’t figure out how to cleanly post the finished document. I decided on the Portable Document Format, aka as the PDF. And to see the post requires one more click. We ask that you please bear with us.
Sit, he says,
on this bench beside me.
It’s been months.
I thought he might be dead.
He’s the kind of person whose
death would go unnoticed.
He smells of liquor, I think.
Maybe I’m wrong.
How are you?
Not very good.
He’s never very good.
He’s had a hard life.
This much is true.
Brought on by
his own poor decisions?
Maybe.
Still.
A couple of dollars
is all he needs,
all he ever asks for.
Sometimes I give more.
He’s got to get out of his apartment.
It’s his third one since I’ve known him.
Always looking for a better place.
A better life.
He is ragged, blood-shot eyes
As he wanders the streets.
I’ll see him at church.
He says he wants to go more.
It’s just hard, you know.
Got to catch a bus.
Too cold, too hot, too far.
He’s always bedraggled,
Always tired,
Always worn out.
But he keeps going.
Why?
In his shoes, I would fail.
But he doesn’t.
He keeps going.
How much better is my life.
How much more I have.
How easy I have it.
I hand him three dollars.
He thanks me.
Promises to try to get to church.
Thanks me again.
And he goes.
copyright 2015, Joseph E Bird
I saw him then, that look of dread
Though months before I thought him dead.
His gate unsure and out of sync,
A scrape of red across his head.
He stepped too close, I did not blink.
His breath was sweet from heavy drink.
And though he looked as if quite mad,
He was a gentle man, I think.
Two bills he knew I always had.
His needs were slight, his wants were sad.
Someone to see his soul was right;
Though rough and worn, he was not bad.
In church, he said, he’d be that night,
As if a debt were owed to rite.
He walked away, his thanks polite,
My guilt and conscience to indict.
Coyright Joseph E Bird, 2014
Author’s Notes: These are true memories that I wanted to get down before they drift away. It’s written in a poetic style because my memories come to me in a sporadic, fragmented way. My dad, who admonished us to stay off the hump, would say it’s not a poem because it doesn’t rhyme. Let’s call it poetic expression.
A Sunday afternoon drive.
Like so many before.
We called it the country
though I know now
it was just outside of town.
A two-lane highway
heavy with tractor trailers,
me and my sisters pestering
each other in the back seat.
We would stand on the floor
and watch through the windshield.
Get off the hump, my dad would say.
We had worn the carpet
to bare metal.
The house was huge,
but it was tired and worn.
Bees buzzed from their hives
within the front porch posts.
Sheet metal was nailed over
the holes in the wooden steps.
There was an aroma
of old wood
soft wood
wet wood.
Earth shady from giant oaks.
And dogs.
Always family.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
All there to see Mom and Sid Morgan.
The oldest people I had ever known.
Ancient and intriguing,
they loved having everybody visit.
Open gas fires
and peeling paint on the walls.
Linoleum coming up from the floor.
So many rooms.
Upstairs,
where no one goes.
An unfinished oil painting
on an easel
in the parlor.
And the museum.
A.S. Morgan’s life.
Alligators.
The two-headed calf.
A bald eagle.
The wheel of West Virginia trees.
Cannonballs.
Finally their lives could not go on,
the house could no longer stand.
Nature has reclaimed the land,
the museum was moved
and moved again.
It’s a hollow shell of what it was.
When I see it now,
it’s hard to think of Sid
or any of the rest of the family.
When my generation passes,
so will the legacy of
Albert Sidney Morgan.
copyright 2014, joseph e bird
“The poets are wrong of course. … But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That’s because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.”
— William Faulkner from The Town
Joseph E Bird 