Long Distance Pome

 There used to be something known as a long distance phone call. 

  

Before Substack philosophers. 

Before algorithm mode America. 

Before the thousand-year flood of knowledge. 

  

When I stood in an evening hour 

In the Overton’s Grocery parking lot 

282 miles away from my foothills home 

  

Dialing zero, area code, and Dad’s number, 

So that the operator would intervene 

Pleasantly, mechanically, till I’d 

  

Say, awkwardly, collect from Tim, 

And I could hear Dad interrupt 

The operator with a breathless yes 

  

Before she could finish asking, will you accept? 

The minutes were so precious on 

The long distance phone call that 

  

Mom would pick up the auxiliary phone 

In their bedroom so that she could share 

In whatever calamity had made the call 

  

Necessary: unexpected money owed 

The university, a failing grade, a breakup 

With a girlfriend, and though I might be 

High on weed or recovering from a party 

Or an all-night test prep, I would manage 

To whittle down the chit chat to what 

  

Seemed essential and dad would stop Mom 

From telling me every detail about what 

Was going on at work or at Dad’s church, 

  

Because they were frugal and they could feel 

The charge climbing quarter by quarter 

Because a long distance call was like 

  

Riding in a cab with its running meter. 

Then mom would say her I love you-bye, 

And Dad would try to end on a high note 

  

With a something Paul Harvey had said, 

Or a nugget he was proud of from 

This past Sunday’s sermon, and I would 

  

Have to hang up or the homesickness 

Would overwhelm me or the guilt 

For though I had reversed the charges 

  

I felt I was somehow paying for the call. 

   

Pome Sunday

 Lessons Before Dying

 

You can spend your whole life

Creating art from the shapes

You find on your way

But if you don’t make something

Somebody wants to put

On their living room wall

Then you better get a job.               

 

You had best find a thing

That will carry you right

Up to your grave

A bird call

An anointment of dew

A cold cup of water

Drawn deep from the well

Like an invitation.

 

Remember not to forget

What Papaw said

About making hay about

When you find the place

Wear your path deep

As an annuity.

Work Pome

 Writing Center

 

The worst part about work was

Having to talk to people,

So that the holy part was

Drained out before I got home

To the ones I’d gone there for.

The worst times were when it was

Slow—no, the worst times were when

It was busy and a day

Slipped by like a swift river.

We sat in unnatural

Light, discussing the rules of

Punctuation and grammar

With disinterested students.

I admit that sometimes they

Cared a lot more than we did.

It was a long scoreless game.

We sat there and we sat there.

With whoever came through the

Door, fixing their brungs and brangs,

Killing all the holy parts.

Baseball-Motel Poem

 Canard

Back when I ran a motel,
We thrived on repeat guests—
Men who lingered at the desk,
Sharing confidences we took as fact
Mostly because they were nice fellows.

One of them—call him Dan—
A big, broad Irish American
Out of New York City, told us
He’d been the backup first baseman
For the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Damn if he didn’t look the part.
Damn if I didn’t buy it—
Until years later, when I finally learned
About the Baseball Encyclopedia.
Sorry. No Dan listed there.

At first the lie felt bigger than it was.
Later, on Baseball-Reference,
I found his minor-league line:
118 home runs—not nothing—
Seven seasons total, six of them
In the Brooklyn system,
Technically stuck behind Gil Hodges,
Just not on the same roster.

So not the towering fiction
I’d heard from other men
Who swore they’d made The Show.
And by the time I met Dan, in 1981,
He probably believed it himself.

Another ONE

 He didn’t have to visit the Lake Country,

Climb the Fells in search of Wordsworth

Or Coleridge, contemplating the horror

Of the self or the division of addiction.

He knew he could reinvent himself

Every day in the overgrown field

With its sniveling coyotes, graceless

Turkeys, bouncing deer, and surprise

Copperheads even as the pain

Bathed him and he thought of the boy

Blake loose in what he called the

Countryhood, waging innocence

Where the Second Amendment

Commands allegiance. Bukowski

Would have hated the trees and grass

But loved the explosion of

Military grade ordinance.

Who could be lured away

For mere history, for the

Nostalgia that reverences

This savage landscape.

Fuck the joyous romantics

And the English departments

That glorified their sad lives.

Glorified Foolishness Pome

 Poetry is glorified foolishness,

Someone said. But English classes

He found were the path of least—

A way out into the capricious world where

Later he would find himself teaching

Which was a fancy name for the process

Of occupying a group’s time—he taught

Poetry as if it were potatoes dug

From a field of rocks and red dirt clods,

Something to be laid on newspapers

Where the concrete basement floor

Once supported a ping pong table.

 

Now the survey lit classes are gone

And you can slip all the way through

Without reading a single fucking poem,

Make your way into the capricious world

Unperturbed by its glorified foolishness.