Dreaming America
Read, curved across carpet like a cat,then, later, in lunch breaks, short-term flights.Absorb American struggle,Steinbeck Dos Passos Faulkner,& on atmospheric eveningssee film adaptations of those books.
Transport yearning abroad,daydreams drift into night dreams& you sling your hook with longshoremen,share views with an unshaven priestwho demands a beer & workers' rightson a poverty-shrouded waterfront.
Seize your chance under Vegas neon,run numbers, survive on actors' charm,stroll Atlantic City's boardwalk,Lucky between lips, ready rebel.Be alone & brokebut high on hope & adventure.
Now wake to an absence of jet-lag& movies that repeat themselveslike a fog of factory hours,American glamour dumbstruck.
This world spins towards old agefaster than belief, faster than silence,faster than turned pages of a book,a narrative about life or death.
Familial fugue
My late uncle, a baritone, never marriedreferred obliquely to missed cues.I thought I heard his young singer's voicewhen he offered me glimpses of the past.He seemed strung too tightly, carpingabout bad government, false glory of Empirebut then, he was rain-wrapt Britishbrother of a suicide and war dead.His father apparently loved a singalongplaying his instruments with enthusiasm.At the piano our mustachioed patriarchresembled an ex-career army sergeantsummoned to subdue the locals, a manwho loved to hear a bugle pierce the dawn.
The baritone's mother quoted Shakespearepreferred her husband to their childrenplacing her faith in him, gin, and ghostsa fervid aura about her at séances.Who knows what she made of Hamlet?When she turned up breast cancer's cardshe hugged her suffering to herself.Downstairs, her husband conductedthe faint exquisite strings of Havanaiseaccompanying her visions of the afterlife.
Ironic greetings from my youngest auntthe last of them, come at Christmasthat crack-patching time for families.She was attracted to blues musiciansbut is alone now, trapped in old age's web.She stars in family lore for pointinga carving knife at her father's hearttold him if he tried to thrash herthe way he thrashed those poor ivorieshe'd wish he'd not survived The Somme.She could have included The Blitza loving wife, four sons, dead comrades.
500 Rummy
They played with two packs, jokers wildbarefooted, sunburnt in the lamplightthis clan by the beach of a turbulent sea.Nobody could shuffle and dealso the father, off the grog, shell-lesswent round in circles, cards flyingsnarling at them to pay attention.One might reach for the discard piletake a chance on a bait-stained handfulthen watch the winner go out with a shout.Caught with your pants down, they'd chortle.A king of spades, beard curling, looked sadfor a family man on holiday.You could tell that if