Some Old Poems

1990
When I was commuting to Portland, working on my Master's degree I was struggling with guilt about not being home where a woman belongs, etc. I wrote this:

THE FAMILY PLAN

Ignorinig the eccelastical wisdom, she stiched about purposes and seasons.
She shuttled on Amtrak between the then and the now.
Out of Sync with her estrogen peers, she grasped at the brass ring of academia
and her children, in frames, lined up on her desk.

She justified letters in place of hugs, with Nikes and braces, but
late trains, the minds "down time" brought unbeckoned guilt and
she wished for the black and white truths of the fifties.

A one way ticket home to middle America via the retorical offerings of the campus library, brought her back to the needle with the threads waiting to spell:
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"
In 1944...the war was on and bubble gum was hard to come by...it was during the Christmas program when we heard the little store on the corner had received the shipment.

1944 Emerson, Trumn, Pearl Harbor and Double Bubble.
Mary and Joseph ran from the scene. Beached toweled shepards and crowned wisemen parachuted from playground swings.
Past "Christmas at Kranz" to que-gue up at the store.
Loafers with pennies were stripped of their trim and the comics from "fleers" littered the snow as the cast returned to their places.
"Hark Angles" and "O come yees" were peppered with pink pops.
War brought shortages of nylons, and gum and big brothers.
In 1947 my mother was dying. We lived in a one room hotel in the skidrow district. I spent time on the streets and discovered the Salvation Army...

1947
Hey Kid! Get in line You can't just walk right in You need a number.
The Salvation Soldier offered his and and she walked at his side to a table up front.

The house had been sold, the dog put away, They lived at the Brent.
No car to drive to see the Smelter Hill lights.
The Mother lay dying.

The party went on in the house of Minniapolis below.
Hot lunches at Largent were the meal of the day
And across the street the Army gave baskets away.

"I don't have a number mister soldier>"
"It ain't heavy..I can carry it."
"I've not far to go."

From Croxford's....to Highland... to St. Thomas.

She joined the blue sea of jumpered carolers who sang to the void.

In 1955, after Gardner was born Carol learned she could get welfare...it was Christmas time and she spent the entire check on presents and decorations.

1955

A court house of stone and a cold female face.
At the end of the line, the child and her baby, a family of two.
Christmas would come now. The welfare check came through.
Blue Christmas with Elvis was traded for White with a Crosby
and the Public Drugstore stayed open that Sunday.
The "Dole" bought the lights and the wrappings for toys.
Her Blue Friends at the Army filled a basket for them,
her and her boy.

1956
The line at the court house for license was brief.
In a Chapel at Malmstrom , yellow bands were exchanged.
After time at the Yellowstone place, all alone,
they picked up the boy, and the girl and
a boy, and a girl and a boy.
Columbus and Deaconess filled the fireplace with
stockings and beds full of sugar plum dreams.
She hummed in the dark by the tree
A processional song..."O come all ye faithful"

She took her place in the line.

Halloween 1993



They shuffle right through the brittle leaf memories...
The remnents of summer can't stop them...
They come from the autumn.

TRICK OR TREAT

twisting and turning down lanes without dates
batmans and witches and princesses play
in her heart where it is summer.

TRICK OR TREAT

Other pumpkins grin lifeless on silver moon nights.
Summers...autumns...with no natural end
abruptly stopped futures...no harvest

TRICK OR TREAT

Posterity lays under modly leaves
in boxes coverd with hard clay
the frost is on the pumpkin

TRICK.