Circe-like, I captivate the world, à cause de toi,
Enchanting with naiveté and charm,
Radiant, love of life unfurled, à cause de toi
No unkind word to do me harm.
You watch, test, tempt, try, à cause de moi,
Attack, berate, belittle, beguile,
Retreat, regret, repeat, reply, à cause de moi.
Together in just a little while.
Humpty Dumpty Girl
Struggling to find connections
That were never there, or ever will be.
Not our fault, don’t waste brain cells on it, she says wisely.
To watch someone you love fall apart
Over the phone. I hear her lost self
Trembling, stuttering in largo speech.
Is that the speed of her thoughts?
Slower than two four time.
Repeating over, under, around truth?
Her truth or my truth?
Could both be lies?
I can’t live inside her head.
My expectations for her to use her gifts,
Maybe they weren’t fair,
More my dream than hers.
She can come back, step on a rock,
Stub her toe, make a wish, take a bow.
Look in the mirror and throw herself a kiss.
She can join the reborn. It’s what we do.
Tumble down, turn around, climb the wall,
Sit on top, two thumbs up, yell ‘Yahoo!’
Oops, there she goes again.
Tumble down, turn around,
“I’m tired,” she says. “I’ll just lay here awhile.”
Help me Henry.
We haven’t spoken in a while. Last time we talked, (I talked, hoping you listened.) it’s likely you thought I was in need of a little encouraging conversation about our common interests.
Well, it’s way more than that now. I’m verging on desperation, supplication, practically on my knees. I’m at an impasse here, Henry, a chasm of indecision, the proverbial brick wall⸺‘writer’s block’. Heartless words that freeze the fingers and baffle the brain.
Did you ever hit the wall? ISO the transitional phrase, the power line that opens the next verse, or that big finish that leaves your readers with their mouths agape, half-way out the door to buy your hand-bound leather anthology? Or was the perfect word a problem? Like, “what rhymes with ‘bergamot’? War well fought? Stumbling sot? Lancelot?
I do realize we’re nine generations apart. The bond may seem inconsequential to some, but I feel the connection. It’s electric. Just knowing you were there gives me a push from behind (OK, so it’s way behind.) but, it’s indisputably in the family tree.
Now to some writers this may seem like a stretch. Relying on a former notable ancestor to help me breathe life into my work? According to the literati of your day here in the good old USA and abroad, you were the most famous poet in the English language.
Henry, I do not like to be the bearer of sad tidings. Your star has fallen just a tad, your crown has slipped to a rakish angle. Critics of today say you were a ‘good minor poet’. The nerve. I stand here as your defender because I’m old enough to remember my grandmother reading your works. You were my bedtime stories.
I’m still a fan and here’s the situation. I’m in your downline on the Wadsworth side. There has to be a gene or two that passed through all those cousins. You see, Henry, I have these books in my head, these poems, chapbooks, treatises, commentary on things great and small. Not in the stratosphere with you, of course, but I know a few people (bona fide editors!) who are ready to read my work. No, they are not relatives! And no, I probably won’t go down in history, but is it too much to ask to help me finish my book. If it turns into a movie deal or a mini-series, I promise to put you in the credits.
When you told your Dad, the lawyer, judge, and oh yeah, member of Congress, that you ‘utterly and absolutely detest’ his profession, it probably singed his beard a bit. Did you ever struggle with that decision? You know, I always wondered how you felt about the writing process? Your poems were so-o-o long. But from the pantheon of your masterworks, it appears the wellspring never ran dry.
I’m still in awe of your musical language, the imagery, the sensuality of your verse. Believe me, I did not see that when I had to read that hexameter epic, Evangeline as a fifteen-year old. But you won me over with The Children’s Hour, my Grandma Emma’s favorite,
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupation,
That is known as the children’s hour.
As a eight-year old, my friends and I played ‘pirates in our treehouse ship’. A favorite was
The Wreck of the Hesperus.
At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
…and then WOW, this fifth grader could not resist Excelsior.
A traveler, by the faithful hound
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice,
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
You know, Henry, writing is such a solitary endeavor. Like you, I have only me to rely on, my harshest critic. (Believe me, I’m demanding.) Sometimes there’s pain. Writing, researching, rewriting, dining, sleeping and dreaming it, editing again and again, struggling with the narrative arc, and questions, questions, questions. Does my black-souled antagonist have any redeeming qualities; can my reader empathize, love her or hate him, does Lady Justice stay in balance? Will they buy my next book?
Another question. When you spoke to your wife and kids, your students, your fellow academics, did you ever find yourself speaking in rhyme? Eight syllable trochaic line? No disrespect, but wasn’t that how your mind worked, rhythm, rhyme…’in the brine’? It happens to me sometimes. I do feel odd.
Henry, your gift was lush, your vision penetrating, your storehouse of classical knowledge plentiful, your ‘cup runneth over’. You offered your readers joy in dewdrops, desolation in loss, inspiration in nature. Word pictures dancing in your head. With each couplet, did you do a little mental minuet, feel the thrill?
On that rare occasion when I write something beautiful, I read it again and again, to make sure it’s mine. When I feel empty, days or weeks without my Muse, humming and whining the writer’s blues, I’ll go to my little Longfellow library, open to a random page and find those lyric lines to feed my soul, stimulate my brain and recharge my fingers.
It happened last week. Life got in my way. Top priority cares and woes. I couldn’t write five words of prose (Oops. It happened again.) And there it was, Something Left Undone. And I quote:
Labor with what zeal we will.
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
I’m asking nicely. Can we talk? Just a few minutes every day. I know there must a few fans out there who remember you and may be requesting a long-distance thought or two. But Henry, look at it this way. We’re related. And you know what they say, about ‘blood and water’. Hey, didn’t you write that?
So, thanks to you, dear Henry, I’m taking a ‘leap into the unknown deep‘ and keeping the family tradition alive. Tomorrow then. What time, you ask? Early.
Your long-lost cousin,
Penn
PS BTW, they could not have paid me enough money to translate Dante’s Inferno! PPS My other grandmother’s name was Edith, like your daughter. One of my better poems is titled I Am Edith Elizabeth. I’ll read it for you one day.
Sun-splashed sparklers light the waters of the bay. Bobwhites sing “Good Morning” in their own melodic way. Loblollys love the wind and answer with a sigh. Shape-changing clouds make pictures in the sky.
The star-studded ceiling puts on a Broadway show, Twinkling, blinking, blazing far as the eye can go. Then off to the East, out over the bay A shooting star falls to bless us on its way.
I watch you lay beside me, Feel your warmth in peaceful sleep. Listen to your breathing as you burrow deep, Deep into renewal and necessary rest On the tides of Dreamland In your love-lined nest.
It took one day, or maybe two,
For stress to ebb away.
My soul anticipated, for what I could not say.
My heart felt truth. My mind could see
The need to find more precious time,
For you and more for me.
You offered me a haven,
The joy of friend-filled days.
Good food, good drink, good company
To help me change my ways.
And now there’s no returning
To the life that I once led.
Once you visit Tranquility Lane,
You have heaven in your head.