Seven Fourteen

714 is a slang term for Quaalude
because of pharmaceutical company markings on the tablets.

714 is an area code in Orange County in California.
714 was Sargent Friday’s badge number.on Drag Net.
The actor who played Joe Friday was Jack Webb. 
He was once married to a singer, Julie London,
who recorded a version of the song, Stormy Weather.
The lyrics were written by Ted Koehler,
who was born on 7/14.

714 was the number of home runs
hit by one George Herman Ruth
who was my mother’s one brush with celebrity
when she danced with The Babe at an outdoor pavilion 
in Saugatuck, Michigan in 1938
She remembered the date.  It was 7/14.

Gifts

Our first Christmas together I gave her Walt Whitman.
She gave me a book on becoming self-actualized.

On her birthday I gave her love poems of John Donne.
For my birthday she gave me a book on how to improve myself.

On Valentine’s day I gave her a volume of Robert Frost.
She gave me a book on how I could become a success.

The next Christmas I gave her Sonnets From The Portuguese.
She gave me a book on how to communicate with her.

Her next birthday I gave her a book on how to improve herself.
She threw it at me as I was backing out of her driveway.

That we were in love was never a question,
nor was it an answer.

Burning

I want to stand next to one of those burning barrels
as if I were homeless, as if I had arrived
at the biggest and best thing I aspire to have,
a warm fire in a fifty-five gallon drum,
people giving the smell of me a wide berth.

And when you pass by me standing at the fire,
give me a quarter or a dollar. 
I know you can spare it.
And don’t look at me that way. I know things.

Unlikely Couple

Setting the table for dinner when I was a child
I always thought of the knife and spoon as a couple
because of the way they sat next to each other
to the right of the dinner plate,
while the fork, insanely jealous of them,
stared menacingly across an expanse of beige stoneware
with a border of tiny blue flowers.

To my great surprise, I heard in a poem
that it was the dish
that eventually ran away with the spoon.
I never saw that one coming.

A Critical Analysis of “Hey Diddle Diddle”

Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon,
The little Dog laughed to see such sport,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.

From the way he was laughing
the little dog must have found the cow
and her moon-jumping hi-jinks quite hilarious,
as did I when I first read about it.
It must have been a spectacular leap
but without a space suit or tanks of oxygen
how could a cow survive such a trip?
It’s obvious, then, that moon jumping,
for the purposes of this poem, is symbolic
or is a metaphor, but for what?
The author never explains.

The cat, I assume, set this all to music
dressed, as I imagine he was,
in little boots and a  feathered cap,
the grin on his feline face growing with every step
of the jig he dances across the barnyard.

The dish and spoon I don’t quite get.
Which is the boy and which is the girl?
Are they eloping or was this a forcible abduction?
If they were eloping,
which I instinctively think is the right answer,
what family found their union objectionable 
and what about afterward?

Will they settle down on their own little farm
in some exotic and far away place like Iowa?
Will they be taking the cow with them?
Are the dog and cat friends and will they be going too?

So many unanswered questions,
so little linguistic evidence to support any particular theory.
But I guess that’s what poetry is.

Birds

He is up early, the cardinal.
“This is my space”, he says, “only mine”.
Another song from a block away
answers, “and this is mine. Stay away”.

Robins, their ears to the dewy ground,
thrush sounds, reporting on their success,
hopping on hopelessly spindly legs,
as though propped up on wooden toothpicks.

The dove couple outside our window
nest on a ledge underneath the eaves.
They are about to hatch spring’s first brood.
We will be grandparents very soon.

Spring

Nothing smells of spring
more than a crowded city bus
full of wet college students.

Tornado Warning

It is April in the mid-west.
We keep our eyes on the sky,
watch flags that stand straight
from their poles
in the south-west wind
for telltale signs of calm
that may turn suddenly deadly.

Walking By Starlight

art deco bus depot
                             at night
                                          darkened lobby
sign in the window
                               eleven departures
five westbound
                                 Chicago
five eastbound        
                                  Detroit
one south              
                Toledo
                            Fort Wayne
                                                Indianapolis
nothing north
                        where there’s nothing
north
                        where I’d want to go

Chess Match

At a coffee house today
two small children were playing chess
while their mothers examined the art on the wall
and waited for their drinks.

Neither child knew how the pieces moved.
The game became about the sounds the pieces made
as they roamed a black and white universe
in search of something to eat.

My Sunday With Dickens

I don’t know if you’ll remember me.
We shared a park bench near midday
on an unprecedented April afternoon.
The sun had bid me stay and read awhile.
I opened a pocket edition of Pickwick.

I heard the gentle clearing of a throat,
looked over across the empty expanse of bench,
saw you looking in my direction
smiling but slightly as strangers do.
You were probably curious
about the strangeness of my clothes.

“What are you reading,” you asked.
“The Pickwick Papers. Do you know it?”
“Yes I do.” you said to me,
“In fact it was I who wrote it.”

I might have thought your statement immodest
on any ordinary day but,
this not being one of those,
I asked you, “is it any good?”
“I think so,” was your reply.
“A lot of people bought it.”