Carrying Good Poems for Hard Times

I brought you with me Garrison Keillor, your breathless
overly NPR’d voice silent in the pages, thankfully.
But, take no offense. It’s silence I’m after, the quiet silence
at the bottom of a poem I’ve fallen deep into.

I brought you to the doctor’s office, Garrison
and let you watch as my heart stalled and I began to fall
until a nurse helped me to lie down and gave me
a breath of fresh oxygen and medicine to get me going again.

She asked about you, Garrison, and I told her
we could open to any page of your book and find
something that would, when we are falling down,
give us a breath of fresh air so that we might all be revived.

I told her I had read your book already, Garrison,
but was going back again for treasure on page four,
page ninety-four, and that Mary Oliver quote on 321.
And when she said, “ew, poetry,” I said, it’s not like that.

You’re with me again today Garrison Keillor,
a good silent friend holding my hand as I step through
another day of Donald Rumsfeld and George W.,
past Nancy Grace screaming and Pepsico selling.

We keep going Garrison, page by page,
through this day and into the next
of what aren’t such hard times after all.

(c) 2006 bgfay for PoetryThursday

Buy Good Poems for Hard Times
selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor.

Haiku: Faces

In the airport line
guards pull an older woman
from her old husband.

They are testing some
strange security machine
on only her for now.

He tries to wait but
they send him through another
line, and I watch him

stare after her as
I imagine the Jews stared
outside of Auschwitz.

This is my homeland,
My country tis of thee, sweet
Jesus, where have we

All gone so far wrong?

(c) 2006 by bgfay for One Deep Breath

Haiku: Music

Pat Metheny plays
guitar over a bass line
Rain on the forest.

The song in my head
comes out as a soft whistle
the birds all agree.

The bird whispers to
the squirrels and bumble bees
Man will destroy us.

Percussive thunder
accompanying the rain
Moon waits in the wings.

(c) 2006 by bgfay for One Deep Breath

Waiting on the Turning of the Year

Lying in bed in the darkness of nearly midnight
I push the button on the side of my watch
So the digital numbers come to light
11:58 and the seconds are ticking away
as the light switches back off.

At midnight, or thereabouts, I’ll turn thirty eight
in my mind–that’s where age is counted after all–
and when I’m not staring at the lighted face of my watch,
the luminescent numbers of time counting down,
I am looking into all my faces over these years.

There is the baby stuck under his crib with a plastic truck,
and the boy in his little league uniform afraid to be at bat;
there is the high school student creating himself anew,
and the college student meeting the love so true.
I push the button on the watch and I am seconds away.

It’s nearly midnight, I’m nearly thirty-eight,
my hair is failing, my stomach a bulge, my children are sleeping,
my wife’s sleeping hand rests lightly on my side.
I leave the watch alone and imagine it ticking
I’m nowhere near the end of this night, of my days.

My eyes close slowly and, for a moment,
I see myself even older, sitting quietly while my grandchildren
play and dance, my children watching them go,
my wife still beside me, and the images of all that I have been
ticking in my mind like a second hand continuously moving

Forever and ever, as though I might never end.

(c) 2006 by bgfay for Poetry Thursday

It’s Track Four: "To the End of the World"

A Pat Metheny Group song is playing inside my head.
Mostly it’s just the bass line, a big stand up bass, and
a bit of guitar, and some piano too along with the
soft brush on cymbals. It’s all there, but mostly
it’s the bass that keeps playing inside my head:
Dum-dum, dum-dum, de-dum
Dum-dum, dum-doom, dah-dum.

I can’t remember the name of the song, but
if I called Chris, interrupted him at work,
saying, “It’s the Metheny Group, from the album–”
(Chris and I still call them albums even now)
“–with the syncopated rhythms,” and then hummed:
Dum-dum, dum-dum, de-dum
Dum-dum, dum-doom, dah-dum,

he would say the name, know it right away;
know the year it was released, the track number,
and he could rank it against the others on the album
according to the strange rubric of our combined tastes.
He would hear that bass line clearly in his head:
Dum-dum, dum-dum, de-dum
Dum-dum, dum-doom, dah-dum.

He would know the name of that rhythm shared between us and could tell me what I need to know but cannot name.

(c) 2006 by bgfay

Barry Levinson’s Sixty Six

At the suggestion of my wife I just read Sixty-Six by Barry Levinson, a novel that feels like memoir and reminds me of Diner with more depth. One of my favorite lines in the whole book was:

I once wrote a sentence that said: “Memories of times that never were are hard to forget.” The older I get, the truer that sentence becomes. (page 65)

It’s a good book, click the title of this post and buy it or go get it from your local library.

Coffee and Tea

Coffee please, never tea
Dark, steaming, bitter morning
Grey skies yet again

Tried tea once or twice
Like an alcohol free beer
Wondered: What’s the point?

She drank herbal tea
and smoked the clove cigarette
while I walked away

Grind up my slumber
Pour my dreams on boiled hot
And drink down this morning

(c) 2006 by bgfay for One Deep Breath

A Seventeen Year Interruption

I don’t remember what we were talking about,
it was just to pass the time and
to stop it from passing.

This was back when a guy could go with a girl
and sit with her near the gate while
planes came and went.

She was headed back to Florida, back home
while I stayed in this place
where we had met.

And I felt then all the same feelings of love
and the first hints of doubt
that she didn’t feel the same.

I remember that I was just about to say
I could come with you,
we could be together,

When her plane was called and she smiled,
saying that it was time to go
that it was time for goodbye.

She said goodbye then and walked through
the doors and down the jetway
without once looking back.

That was seventeen years ago and until
this weekend, when I saw her again
for the first time,

I was still standing there looking at where
she had once been and wondering
when she would come back

So that we could finish what we had to say.

(c) 2006 bgfay

Down From the Trees

The women of Amazon are
not like the girls of old
who lived among the darkness
of that impossibly thick jungle.

No, these new Amazonians
toil endlessly in cubicles
processing orders for books
and unnecessaries of every kind.

They ship them from
a well-lighted warehouse
far from the trees, the river
in Phoenix and Dallas/Fort Worth.

Oh, mighty women of the Amazon
I mourn your independence
your power and my own fears.
But thank you for these goods

delivered straight to my home
from wherever you are
via men in brown or white trucks
and wondrous Super-Saver Shipping.

(c) 2006 by bgfay

The Scenic Route

The county turnpike
still wooded and deeply green,
never straightaway

Route thirteen winding
with the movement of the creek.
Suddenly waterfalls

Down Seven valleys
over six mountains we climb
and fall endlessly

Mom and Dad are young
again, driving aimlessly.
How am I so old?

(c) 2006 bgfay, written for One Deep Breath