Saturday Pome

 

Day in the Life 2024

 

The truck in front of us says

In huge bold back window letters:

Avoid the father

Ram the daughter

I’m watching my wife look at this

As we pass the Long View Internet Café

Max’s Junk Yard and Lowman’s Motel

There’s some class, she says

But I’m thinking about my granddaughters

 

The strippers are mowing the grass

At the Treasure Club as we pass

I remember running to the basement

Of the library to get to the shelf

That had the sports books

I remember the smell of those books

 

We’re back behind the truck

With its roaring muffler

Its temporary politics

They turn right

Where we turn left

That’s how it is

When I get home

I’m gonna hug those girls.

Thursday Poem

 

About to Knock

 

Behind the busted clapboard shack

A sea of broken lawnmowers swam

In a pine-needle gulley.

A swarm of mopeds more abandoned

Than parked in the grassless yard,

Tarpapered windows

Kept the world at length.

The finance creditor stopped

His Buick Regal by the road,

Stepped perilously through

Thistle and briar bush toward

The stepless plywood porch.

In the sun nothing stirred.

Till he stood at the door,

An expensive steel contraption

With a teardrop window,

About to knock.

Morning Poem

 

Obscure

 

Early enough in the day,

Surely I’m about to surprise myself.

If I listen good, I hear

The momma turkey conducting

Her eight chicks across the trail

I will reach in five clicking minutes,

The light a perfect yellow fade

Into scrub hickories thick

As a full court press.

A fat copperhead, still full of night,

Crawling toward the granite

Aperture of his domain

Pauses to blend with pine needles

In a slow pitch of shadow

I pass without knowing.

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