A good story (e)told inside a good story of a day in the park, there, Max. A natural rhythm in these triplets…
Doug
On Jun 3, 2015, at 9:35 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Summer in Seattle
>
> On a good day in Cal Anderson Park
> you may see shining young bodies
> stretched out soaking up the sun;
>
> others active with ball games,
> some crowding each others’ bikes at polo,
> some in a circle with hula hoops,
>
> or paired-off in circus gymnastics,
> watched by a shirtless chap
> with a cockatoo on his shoulder.
>
> Others sleep, mess of homelessness
> strewn about them, likely to stir
> and ask for your small change.
>
> Today I let my dog be petted
> by a woman who once had a beagle
> whose story took minutes to tell
>
> and was told again to a passerby
> with her Australian dog called Sheila.
> We watched a guy camped on the steps
>
> that lead to a blank stone wall with
> waterworks machinery behind.
> He was high on something, or
>
> perhaps (she thinks) schizophrenic -
> clowning desperately in rags
> fewer and fewer. She offered
>
> to bet - would he be naked or
> not before five minutes were up?
> I swore to be away in four,
>
> but we were talking about
> the whisky she was sipping
> from a coke bottle, the shelter
>
> she stays in since losing her house,
> her hopes of a second go at rehab
> down near Tacoma if they’ll have her back.
>
> This Paterson she’d just whizzed through
> from the Public Library. Me,
> I was spoiled for bestsellers long ago,
>
> by teaching Dickens and Jane Austen.
> Really? Tell me the story of Pride
> and Prejudice - would I like it?
>
> Oh, I floundered, the father must find
> men with money to marry his daughters…
> When was this? - Eighteen hundred or so.
>
> Before, she exclaimed, the Industrial
> Revolution! that far back! It all seemed
> a long way from our park with its folk
>
> making do on very little. Maybe start,
> I said, with a movie. Laurence Olivier?
> She remembered him - Hollywood,
>
> Lawrence of Arabia, he filmed all that.
> I go that far back, she said, wistful:
> I called my beagle Sherlock Holmes.
>
> The stone cone has water on again
> flowing from the top, a cool volcano,
> into a pond we’re not allowed in.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
There is no life that does not rise
melodic from scales of the marvelous.
To which our grief refers.
Robert Duncan.
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