[with 3 poems by Michael Beadle]
4 AM. Reason says you need to sleep; everything but reason says forget about it. Sweating, restless – how long? – I finally force into the background those pricks of regret past & future and focus on the faces of my friends. In silence I speak each name and visualize each person. Then their son. Their granddaughter. I wish for them enfolding arms of peace.
And as I see their smiles I also see their pain. Can I imagine a single one who has not been visited by grief? Who isn’t struggling, right now, 4 AM, with worries for the ones they love, with heartsickness, with loneliness? All of them suffer behind the smiles.
And all of them go on living. Remarkable, isn’t it? Unbelievable. All of us suffer and all of us go on living for those few moments of hope, of joyfulness, of connection with another, moments that waft through our days like some longed-for fragrance – we can’t tell where it’s come from, we can’t catch it and keep it, we simply trust it will return.
Moments that waft through our nights. 4 AM. I breathe out a word of love for each friend. Call it prayer. May we be one.
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Wild Horses
They know they’ll never stand again –
the bay colt missing a hind leg,
the palomino whose front hoof
came unglued, the cream-coated filly
with ebony ears and a clipped tail.
Porcelain stallions paraded for decades
on living room doilies, unbridled mares
guarding crystal jars of peppermints.
Silent companions of cocktail parties,
Christmas dinners, afternoon tea.
If Oma gave them names, I never knew.
After she died, they spent months
wrapped in newspaper,
boxed on basement shelves.
Perhaps they grew restless,
kicked each other in a barn-fire panic,
hoping to free themselves for the rainy day
when strangers came to haggle over
the china I’d never use. Let them
take the pewter goblets, the steins that smelled
like old pencils, tubs of tools
that bore the scars of hard seasons.
The tray of horses was all I hoped to keep.
I came to love them –
not for what they once were,
but, being broken,
how they went on living.
+++++ Michael Beadle
. . . . . . .
Poets play with words. They select them as carefully as the chocolate from the sampler that must be raspberry truffle. They wiggle words around until uncomfortable becomes comfortable and we exclaim, Oh! I see! They tickle them until the words gasp out a new meaning they’d never revealed before.
Michael Beadle plays and frolics and romps with words. He flips over rocks and pulls out wrigglers that haven’t been seen on a page in a coon’s age, if ever. If he can’t find the words he wants he makes up some new ones right then and there. He cavorts, he rolls around on the floor with words until they all collapse laughing. He snuffs them up, he savors, he rolls words around in his mouth until he’s sure he’s found just the right flavor.
And Michael sits down on the sofa with words, arms around each other’s shoulder, while they speak to each other oh so softly. I understand. We’ll get through this together. What are friends for?
. . . . . . .
The Naming
“What about this one?” I asked.
“Mylax,” he replied.
“And this one?”
“Plumdrum.”
We were at the lakeshore again
among the cool bed of rocks,
our words echoing
across the water.
Ghozlak +++++ Aya +++++ Zephanos
Lifting each rock,
we felt its weight in our palms,
closed our eyes
until a name arose.
Millanthium +++++ Whillet +++++ Lippery
We hurled the rocks
as far as we could
into the lake,
giving them
a new depth to find.
There we sat for hours,
the only ones left in this world
who could conjure
its litany of names.
Perio +++++ Shezai +++++ Calex
As darkness crept into the cove,
we chose new rocks,
hardened by time, tempered by water,
and steadied our minds
for the Naming.
+++++ Michael Beadle
. . . . . . .
These three poems are from Michael Beadle’s The Beasts of Eden (©2018, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC). Its three sections include deep memories and deeply poignant moments; raucous celebrations of Western North Carolina roots and language; pointed retelling of myths, local legends, and Bible stories. Michael, you’ve made me laugh and you’ve made me cry. You’ve brought a sweet fragrance into this moment. I am restored and refreshed by joining you as friend.
. . . . . . .
Yay-long
It is most certainly not a member of the metric system,
perhaps a distant relation to the foot or yard.
Snubbed by the methodical and meticulous
who pride themselves with empirical accuracy,
it endures as a standard among Southerners
when a tape measure won’t do.
How big was that possum? the man at the gas station asks.
‘Bout yay-long, his friend replies, hands spread wide, like so.
Yay-long or yay-high declares without stretching
the truth to eleventy feet. Used sparingly,
yay-long approximates for those who didn’t see
the neighbor’s copperhead startled in the wood pile.
A breath of anticipation between those hands,
experience borne from the invisible.
Yay-long serves memory as memory serves the teller,
and so we nod, eager for the rest of the story.
+++++ Michael Beadle
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 