Things I learn from editing Richard Eller books

 

What I Learned Today

 

In the 1930s, there was a half mile packed red clay track

At the Catawba County Fairgrounds, now Hickory High School,

And they ran car races there during the fair,

Races that drew 10,000 people, who stood outside

The fence, and they staged a head-on collision

Between two cars, which drew the top billing.

They had found something particular to the area

Where bootleggers ran trunk loads of hooch

Down mountain roads, the like of which

We can hardly imagine, that one in six adults

Was involved some way in the moonshine biz,

That World War II stopped it all for four years

Yet it returned with a vengeance, men and machines

And soon enough baseball was dead.

 

Prine Poem

 

Prime Prine

 

There were years I lived on the

Strength of John Prine songs, singing

Grandpa Was a Carpenter

When I was feeling down or

Old People when I needed

To swim in melancholy.

I saw him my sophomore

Year Lenoir-Rhyne College.

He swayed and drank and warbled

Reaching for the mike stand one

Too many times when he near

Fell off the stage and then he

Sang a song I didin’t know

About Jesus walking on

Water into a boat’s path,

And when he finished a young

Man stood up and shouted You’re

A fool, Jesus can do any-

Thing and loud-stomped out the aisle.

Prine had been in the army,

Had been a mail carrier,

He had seen some crazy shit.

He reached for his beer and went

Straight into Illegal Smile.

Interview Poem

 

Al

 

He sits across the bar table

From his former student,

A wheelchair bound late teen

When he taught him English

At the community college.

 

He’s come to interview him

As an alumnus for a book

The college is doing on its history.

He’s early 40s now, still boyish faced

With the same gleam in his eyes.

 

I DJ here four nights a week, he says.

It’s just before Christmas and the joint

Has a life sized Donald Trump cutout

Dressed as Santa Claus. The sound system

Throbs the latest bro country tunes.

 

I’m a lucky guy, he says. I’m married,

Got two children. The doctors told me

I wouldn’t live past 25, but here I am.

Mind if I get a shot of you in the DJ booth?

He scrambles across the dance floor.

 

Same as the old days, racing his chariot.

Back at the table, he asks him what do

You remember about the school?

You guys took me bowling one day at lunch.

I’ll never forget it. I wasn’t worth a shit.

 

But everybody was amazed that I could

Bowl from my chair. People on the other lanes

Stopped to watch me turn and fling that ball.

I took classes and got a degree. I was already

Who I am. That Day y’all let me know I was one of you.

 

 

Lucky

 

Lucky

 

Never forget how lucky you were

To live your life with people who loved you

And how you were only alone

When you chose to be

Even when you chose it too much

Even if fame never came

Even when the flame burned low

When the pain was all encompassing

You were lucky to be with people you loved

Some people are not

Lucky

 

Water Poem

 

What we Have Has No Name

 

Two freezing cold spring heads that thread

A creek through a granite gorge

Past mountain laurel, poplars

Reaching straight to skylight, then

A rich man’s muddy catfish pond,

Slipping the rock spillway to

Join the Henry Fork before

It becomes a murder river.

Poem for Sam Silva

 

Poem for Sam Silva

 

It’s the shithead, he’d say

When he called, meek-voiced

Deep in the need to read me a poem.

 

Four, five times a week

We sent each other envelopes

Stuffed with typed poems

Searching for one reader

Learning the line, making a voice,

 

End of the 80s, the most boring

Decade in American history.

Sam was paranoid schizophrenic.

My wife thought I was crazy, too.

 

Mr. Peeler, you’ve got to hear this,

He’d say when he called

In his booming Voice of God

From the house in Fayetteville

Where he lived with Rachel the artist

Who he worshipped

In love poem and love poem.

She saved him every day.

 

I would listen to him.

Then we would compliment each other.

Throwing life preservers through land lines.

We didn’t know yet how obscurity

Would settle over us like a protective shell,

Delivering us from the worse things

We might become.

 

Now we are old men,

Sam only able to write haiku,

And me, well, look at this shit.

 

But there is nothing more relaxing

Than an hour of his latest e-book.

No longer a shithead,

No more Voice of God.

He’s damned good at it.

Mas Mas, my old friend.

 

 

GOAT

 

GOAT

 

I drove to the city my father was from,

Past farm fields and blocks of industry.

I was early and in a hurry,

Following the roads we’d taken

When Dad’s extended family met

At the country church he attended as a child.

Rain fell and I listened to a data scientist

On NPR who had done a lengthy study

To prove who had best played

Basketball in the NBA and concluded

That Mugsy Bogues when compensating

For size is the all-time GOAT.

I missed a turn, thinking about this,

Caught up in the speaker’s nerdy enthusiasm.

I took another wrong road

And a big drink of water.

I felt like a poem becoming a prose piece.

Rain continued to fall as I sped

Through the city my father was from,

Barely noticing the half-abandoned downtown.

I called my old friend on the cell.

Why don’t you get your phone to guide you?

He said. I don’t have that kind of phone.

My dad’s been dead nineteen years.

And never had a cell phone.

I thought about watching Mugsy Bogues

The one time I went to the Dean Dome,

When he almost beat Carolina by himself.

Just as I saw the meeting place ahead,

And wondered if maybe there is a world

Where he is the GOAT.