V E R S E and I M A G E

++++ warning sign in my mountain cabin

This time, others have seen you,

treading circles on the gravel drive,

shouldering through grapevine tangles.

The possibility of you was always here,

in the night-mouth of the cave that gapes

below my porch, in dark boulders

hulking along the trail.

Your presence countermands silence –

I chatter and sing as I walk the open road,

snatches of carols, toddler songs –

and shy from the path that meanders

to a sunlit filed strewn with windfalls

from long-neglected trees. I imagine

you keeping pace, just out of sight,

your huffs mocking my jabber,

your heavy steps a counterpoint

as I scurry past thickets, scan uneasily

the curving trail ahead, intruder

in a world that was never mine,

though you are the first to insist

that I acknowledge it.

from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024

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What would a toddler remember about moving away? The apartment in Niagara Falls is a dream of stairwells and windows and darkness outside; the new house in the new subdivision with no grass at all is a neighbor’s dog named Bishy. Or was Bishy the neighbor’s toddler I played with?

I am four when we move away again, from New York to Tennessee, and I remember plenty about Marion Road: Bob and I watching Little Rascals until Mom declares, “You’re going to turn into rascals!”; our little sun room Aunt Ellen fitted up as a bed-sit while she attended Memphis State, and we kids hiding giggling under her covers until she came home each afternoon; the neighbor boy who introduced us to the word butt and we thought we were the first humans ever to utter something so outrageous. Memories of the neighborhood, yes, but memories of moving there? Packing and unpacking? Worrying that Puppy would get lost in the shuffle or that somehow Mom wouldn’t be there when we arrived? None of that remains.

Our family makes one more inconsequential move just blocks away when I am six, but then when I’m twelve the Big Away arrives. Up until this what a tranquil 1950’s childhood: I walk to Colonial Elementary every morning with my friends and play with the same friends every evening until the streetlights come on. Serene. Now I’m midway through sixth grade, still coasting, when the bomb drops. Did I protest when Dad announced in January we were leaving Memphis to move to Delaware? Maybe, I don’t recall; that memory is muddy, but this one is sharp as crystal – I walk into class in my new school and my new classmates all turn to look. My clothes aren’t right, my accent is a joke (literally – within about sixty seconds I will have the nickname “Memphis,” which sticks), and I have a different teacher for every subject. And then in just six more months we will move to Michigan. Just over a year beyond that, two months into eighth grade, we move to Ohio.

So, my friend, is it any wonder that some sixty years later I have trouble remembering your name until the fourth or fifth time we meet? That as we converse in a group you notice me smiling and nodding and slowly drifting off into space? That I would rather write this blog into the wee hours than drop by your house for coffee? I want to be a good friend to you, and in fact I like you and this hug from me to you is real, but ah, it’s risky. There’s always that possibility, without warning and with no desire on my part, that someday soon I might be moving away.

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It never occurred to me to wonder how Dad felt about all those moves. The moving was his fault, after all, necessary for his promotions and advancement with DuPont, for whom he worked all his life. I can scarcely imagine the million details he had to sift through to put his family into boxes and take them out again hundreds of miles away. I’m not surprised that as I clean out his house I find drawers full of lists on yellow pads, on the backs of junk mail, on bills and receipts. Half the time when he calls me, it’s to add something to the shopping list. And then there are still those boxes in the attic labeled Allied Van Lines.

But what about the rest of us? Did Dad wake sweating in the middle of the night worrying how moving away would affect his family? Just one time he blinked: after I was married and gone but Mary Ellen was still at home, a junior in high school, Dad turned down a promotion so she could graduate with her class. A sacrifice that stalled his career for a decade.

Tomorrow is Dad’s last moving day. Since Mom died in July, Dad has agreed to move closer to us. For a week I’ve ferried boxes and duffels, checked off my lists and then made new ones, and tomorrow after lunch I’ll drive Dad to a nursing center just two miles from our house. He says he’s willing to move as long as the food is good (it is). We’ve hung portraits of the grandkids, pastels by Mom. His Duke pillow is on the recliner and his new Duke banner hangs on the door of room 507 to welcome him. God knows I’ve been waking in the middle of the night sweating the million details. Let us hope that after 98 years of moving, Dad will discover in this new and final home a place to rest.

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Porta Nigra   *

++++ Trier, Germany

The breath of sun and rain

only darkens on my face.

The cat-claws of millennia,

the graffiti of tourists,

fade into my walls.

I, who guarded this city so long,

sit truncated now.

My frieze the sweaty flesh

of lovers on cool bare stones.

Catch me in another thousand years,

your eyes as hard and dark as mine.

See if these holes will match

the mysteries of death

and flesh on blackened stone.

from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024

* a gate in the remaining piece of Trier’s old Roman wall

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The 2024 issue of I-70 Review arrived in last week’s post. Besides many wonderful voices new to me, I discovered within its pages several old friends who’ve agreed to let me reprint their poems.

I-70 Review, Writing and Art from the Middle and Beyond is based in Kansas, USA, but publishes poetry, short fiction, and art from around the world. They also sponsor the annual Bill Hickok Humor award for poetry.

Submission guidelines HERE

Purchase a copy HERE

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++++++ – in memory of Jay Klokker

Driving past Agate Bay, I catch a glimpse

of this deer in a splotch of sun and shadow –

the brown-tail’s flanks on the edge of the road

in yellow leaves, thin branches. Las May

after your death, a bear cub loped beside my car

like a lost Labrador, seemed to disappear

under my front bumper. Slamming on the brakes,

I felt no thud, heard nothing. Amazing, the cub

as if uninjured, clambered up the ditch-bank.

Only later, after your memorial, did I reread

your last poems, that black bear nosing

at your sleeping bag in the camp site

in Arizona; recalled marmots whistling

in the pillow basalt near Mt. Baker; the grouse

thumping its tail near our driveway,

feasting on red hawthorn berries.

You noticed. I cannot believe you said no

to another go-round on the cancer wish machine,

you called it, completed your book First Stars.

On you last hike, you raced downhill

in your wheelchair, shouting. You must

be in these sun spots, mottled shadows.

Too excellent a camouflage, my friend –

thin, flickering branches, a few gold leaves,

before all the color goes away.

from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024

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Last night coyotes laughed

at the neighbor’s bulked-up lab restrained

behind his chain-link, his fearful bark,

their yips of liberty and mild derision;

are coyotes such demons, or just particular

about whom they allow to know them?

Or are they perhaps spirits of the other,

avatar of all we hominids in our marrow

know to fear? How to live beside that feeling?

Afraid of attack I stab; afraid of pain I cause it.

In the woods before daylight willingly lost,

soft tread, a twist in the trail then face to face –

perhaps she and I look into each other’s eyes

for two seconds, perhaps the rest

of my life; coyote impassive,

considerate, measures our distance,

our closeness, then softly pivots

and pads away, prudent, fearless,

willing to allow the two of us

to share the universe.

from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024

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