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Tall Tales
Saturday, May 26, 2007 Welcome back. We've been gone, but here we are again with "Here and Now" number II.5.4. I apologize for the inconvenience some of your are running into in loading the blog. Our "Supersize" issue from the end of April is a huge file and is apparently causing some delays in loading for some readers. I'm continuing to fish for ideas on how to speed things up, but haven't come up with anything that works up to now. A consolation is that the when I post next week, the "Supersize" issue will slip into the archive and the problems some are having will go with it. We will still be slower than I would like, but not nearly as bad as it is now.  We start with one of the great old American standards, Carl Sandburg, and some of his short poems from a series he titled Handfuls. The first one is probably his most famous one, the one almost everyone who reads has read (even if they don't remember it). Fog The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Jan Kubelik Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quiv- ered in the air. (A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child perfect learning to suck milk.) Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild. (All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday after- noon in the hills with their lovers.) Crimson Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold. Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.) Whitelight Your whitelight flashes the frost tonight Moon of the purple and silent west. Remember me one of your lovers of dreams. Flux Sand of the sea runs red Where the sunset reaches and quivers. Sand of the sea runs yellow Where the moon slants and wavers. Your white shoulders I remember And your shrug of laughter. Low laughter shaken slow From your white shoulders Troths Yellow dust on a bumble bee's wing. Gray lights in a woman's asking eyes. Red ruins in the changing sunset embers; I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.  Here's a little culinary advice from me. ordering chicken at popeye's I like the dark meat drumstick's my specialty but you gotta watch them or they'll stick you with a wing get one of those scrawny wings and you might as well be eating feet  Next, a bit of prose from our good friend Alice Folkart Ruby hated lots of things, Brussels sprouts, loud music, hot weather, yappy little dogs, but she couldn't hate people. As a child, she had been urged to hate "Nazis," then "Japs." A few years later, she was supposed to hate North Koreans, Commies and Russians. And, after that, she was told that the Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, also Commies, should be hated. One war after another -- these were bad people she was told. Everyone hated them. She tried to work up a good hate. She saw the Nazis and Japs in the Newsreels on Saturday, at the movies, then saw the Koreans and the Viet Cong in her own living room, on TV, men in uniforms, with helmets and guns, slogging through mud or jungles, throwing grenades, firing machine guns. She got a good look at them as prisoners, starved-looking, dejected men in rags, hanging their shaved heads, bare feet on dirt or snow. She wondered about them, their families, why they were fighting, what they did when they weren't soldiers, what they would do after if they weren't killed. These were real people for her. She couldn't hate them. Ruby's childhood had been uneasy; she had been unwelcome in the world. Her mother, and grandmother, and even some of the neighbors, had roughly passed her from hand to hand, no one wanting the responsibility. She could have hated them. Instead, she became careful, tried to please, made herself useful, and wondered why they'd taken her in and what they were going to do with her. She couldn't help but feel their anger and despair at being stuck with her; she felt as if she were looking into a mirror; she couldn't hate them. She learned that it wasn't her they hated; it was only her existence, such a burden, such an inconvenience, such an expense. They couldn't see past these. Her life was precarious even when she was kind and thoughtful and made herself very small. What might happen if she ever allowed herself anger, gave in to hatred, burst out in fury? She was sure she would die. The guardian of the moment would call all the others together, point at her, yell, "Ungrateful, insubordinate, messy, noisy, demanding, dirty, eats too much - there's only one thing to do. FIRING SQUAD!" Machine guns, black and angular, would jump into their hands. One of the women would lead her to the concrete block wall in the back yard, offer tie a blue cowboy bandana over her eyes, then step away. Rattatat Rattatat! No, she couldn't hate anyone.  Arlitia Jones is a poet who would have been dear to Carl Sandburg's heart. Jones is a butcher as well as daughter and sister to butchers. Born in Washington state, she moved with her family to Alaska when she was very young. In Alaska, her parents opened a wholesale butcher shop and taught her and her brother the trade. She continues to work full time in the shop as a meat wrapper and bookkeeper, while also earning a MFA degree from the University of Alaska where she teaches creative writing part-time. Here are two poems from her book The Bandsaw Riots. Meatwrapper's Lyric Out of the corner of my eye I peg her to be the pretty wife of an important man. Always, it's ones like her who ask, "How can you stand the sight of blood?" She watches me weigh out the three pounds of extra lean ground round and wipe my hands on my apron to keep from spoiling the clean white butcher paper I wrap it in. "You get used to it," I shrug and think of the blood's aged color - not that hot red shock of a life leaked out - more brown and watery as old coffee, blood dull as engine oil on the cutting room floor where we've racked through with our heavy boots. Thursday night must be "her night" to cook for husband and two kids. Her recipe, from a magazine, will clutter her kitchen with forth-eight separate ingredients, an electric chopper and, I'd bet money, a double broiler. I smile. Count back change. "It's no big thing. I wash my hands a lot and when I get home the kidses dog goes apeshit licking my feet." Hellraiser Raise a ruckus, I told those women, beat pots and pans and rattle your chains. Enough of coyness. Give 'em hell and when the bosses tell you go home you tell 'em Mother Jones gave you a chore to do. Put your brooms in the air, start to howl and tell 'em by God you'll clean up any scab dares cross your line. Fifteen men died in that explosion in Arlington. I saw their bodies hauled up out of the ground and I looked in the eyes of those miners' wives and found desperation, not grief. Miners' wives can’t afford grief, they still got children to feed and nothing left to them but a handful of scrip and a debt at the company store. Mother, they cried, what do we do now? and this is all I knew to tell them: you fight like hell till you go to heaven and God willing that ain't coming yet. And I'll tell you this, I'd been there the year before and I'm grateful to say those men died organized. And the next day the miners came out and Mr. Rockerfeller didn't make a dime off anyone's brokedown back. Enough of hypocrites! Your men have breathed black air long enough. Now the Pinkertons are carrying arms, I said, so you keep our men busy at home and you go and claim their right to see the sun. It ain't fair to spend the daylight underground with nothing but the yellow flick of a candle. You claim your right to your husbands, to wash the hell off them one day a week. Sisters, I told them, power is never given, it's always taken. Rockerfeller has no heart, and the poor man has a mansion of sorrow.  Here's a fun poem from "Here and Now" first-timer, Dawn Shepler Shimp. Dawn says of herself that she lives in rural Ohio, where she writes poems and tries to save the birds who continually fly into her windows. Sonnet on How My Husband is Making Me Fat, Wherein I Randomly Change Rhyme Scheme Mid-Poem for No Reason Whatsoever, but Decide to Leave it because, Hell, this is just Practice and Hell, the Original Rhyme Scheme was Wrong for a Sonnet Anyway I look up and gaze down my long driveway to see a man who's walking, dressed in gray it's just my husband going out to get the paper in his jammies, sure, but yet it startles seeing his form in the haze of fog that's lifting up and off the pond and it occurs to me that in my brain the chemicals don't know that I am wrong to startle, only know that I felt fear and set to work to normalize and keep homeostasis, try their best to clear the panic chemicals, and what is cheap to use in this process is cortisone which leads to belly fat. So, there you go!  Here's another one of mine, written last week. an old man coming if an apple fell on my head I'd say cool and eat it and the whole rigamarole of Newtonian physics would have been avoided but not you for you, every yin has a yang, every issue a deeper issue with connections and ramifications, multiple consequences that must be considered, as well as lessons that must be learned I used to be that way then I looked in a mirror, saw and old man coming, and went sane  Now a poem by Rita Dove from her book On The Buss With Rosa Parks. Against Self-Pity It gets you nowhere but deeper into your own shit - pure misery a luxury one never learns to enjoy. there's always some meatier malaise, a misalliance ripe to burst; Soften the mouth to a smile and it stutters; laugh, and your drink spills into the wake of repartee gone cold. Oh, you know all the right things to say to yourself: Seize the day, keep the faith, remember the children starving in India....the same stuff you say to your daughter whenever a poke-out lip betrays a less than noble constitution. (Not that you'd consider actually going to India - all those diseases and fervent eyes.) But if it's' not your collapsing line of credit, it's the scream you let rip when a centipede shrieks up the patio wall. And that daughter? She’ll find a reason to laugh at you, her dear mother: "Poor thing wouldn't harm a soul!" she'll say, as if she knew of such things - innocence, and a soul smart enough to know when to get out of the way.  And another of mine, from several weeks ago. green pastures cat wants out dog wants in rooster wants the day off on Thursday isn't anyone ever satisfied anymore?  From New Zealand, our friend Thane Zander presents us with this piece. An Errant Poet Paints an Andy Warhol piece It started with a painting at auction reaching ninety five million dollars The artist passed away in 1988 the same year another artist, my mother passed away, though her works command a striking free fee, such a giving lady she was. Warhol on the other hand, Green Cars Crashing sucks a load of cash out of some suspecting buyer, generally a mish mash of paint and papier mache the likes of school aged kids splattering with love. The times when he held a can of Campbell's Soup up as art, cracked my funny bone, I have a gift then as I dabble freehand with pastels and watercolours, One senses his pop culture versus my kiwi culture far outweigh the latter. I search my room for a masterpiece, something worthy of millions and spy a decrepit translation of the Maori in me, I had displayed and received reverence and accord. What would a dead artist do with ninety five million? What would you do with that amount? Swing from the rafters and do bally hoop with chickens in the foul house of life, cluck cluck, what the fuck? I measure my next attempt at Art, raise the hands above the keyboard, and ..... The End, signed me.  Gilbert Sorrentino was born in Brooklyn in 1929 and lived there and in Manhattan all his life. He published six volumes of poetry and five novels before he died in 2006. This poem is from his collection, Selected Poems, 1958-1980 The Meeting 1. We all know too much of loneliness. I used to think a man came stronger out of it. That might be so. Testing the old vapidities is not the same as saying them. They come at you screaming, they cut up the soul, injure you remorselessly: these things that once lay under our surfaces waiting to be used as objects to cause laughter, are become fiends, they have northern eyes, blue eyes, there is nothing at the bottom of them, they sit in faces that leer obscenely, that take on the faces, the shapes and declensions of friends, They speak if you will listen to them, if you can bear it. 2. "Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mae currunt," not necessarily so, not at all so, or say that the sky changes you. I picked up pieces of petrified wood in Arizona, climbed a mesa that had stood there 6 million years, it was made of clay and rose coral, on top of it, I saw as far as I could see in all directions, nothing: but sky, but earth, but sky and earth, meeting, the evil winds laughed at and past me. On the road you sat in the car, the children in the car, your leg protruded from the open door, and I was suddenly made barren, suddenly a terrible aloneness, and the winds frightened me. I thought I should not see you again, the sky was full of blood and darkness, the blue was the blue of the west, our west, deadly and implacable. it was the eye of Satan, of all false gods, the evil eye. 3. He said he could give up everything except he could not give up anything when the test was made of him. He is a quiet man, I used to mistake that for strength when I was younger. I mistook it for solidity and thought all stronger men were silent. I have always talked, to much, and hated it in myself. But what is speech but the release of strength that threatens to destroy us? What is speech but the incantation that can make me out of mud and mountains out of slime and nothingness? "Still waters run deep," is a lie, bring me the talkers, the windbags, confessors and liars, the men who talk all night and all day who do nothing but talk, who won't stop even when they have no more to say, silence is no more than the lid of the garbage can. 4. I touched you, it was as if I had never touched anything, you were water, there was a smell of water in your hair, your ands were quick and nervous fragile to hold and there was water on them I want to shatter the winds that prey on us I reach through years for your hand.  Our next poem is from another "Here and Now" first-timer, Khadija Anderson. Khadija says she is a Butoh dancer, poet, and alumni of The Evergreen State College. A mother of four, ages 3 1⁄2 to 22, she lives in Seattle and is pursuing a career as a poet while earning a living playing with babies. She says she actively challenges the myth that persons near age 50 are getting old. soy mysterioso I told you he grabbed my ass as we danced a slow salsa told me I was beautiful hell yes it was a line but I fall for those Tony with his smooth merengue pulled me close hips swaying together god I fall for that the tall man I danced with asked if I knew the cha cha are you alone my heart is pounding que linda you laughed but here I am now thinking about them  Another observation piece, from a young girl I saw at Borders. Sister Rosa would not like this at all the dress worked ok at home in the mirror but now, out in public with her friends, she is excruciatingly aware of the scooped neckline that shows the soft curves of the sides of her breasts and the little perk of her nipples against the soft fabric of her blouse and she is embarrassed, walking quickly looking left and right with downcast eyes like a child about to be scolded, walking with her hands held awkwardly in front of her chest if Sister Rosa were to see her now she would surely die  Driving 4,000 miles, as I did several weeks ago, allows plenty of time to listen to CD's. Among the ones we listened to was an old CD called The Highwaymen, featuring Willie Nelson, Kris Kristoffrerson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. They recorded the CD then did a tour together. This was probably 15-20 years ago. I like all four and remembered, when listening to it in the car, how much I had liked the CD when it came out. Among my favorite songs on the disc is the title song, written by Willie Nelson. It's a four verse song, with Nelson taking the first verse, Kristoffrerson, the second, Jennings, the third, and Cash finishing with the final verse. Here it is. I was a highwayman, along the coach roads I did ride, With sword and pistol by my side. Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade. Many a soldier shred his lifeblood on my blade. The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five: But I am still alive. I was a sailor, I was born upon the tide, And with the sea I did abide. I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico. I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow. And when the yards broke off, they said that I got killed: But I am living still. I was a dam builder across the river deep and wide; Where steel and water dud collide. A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado, I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below. They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound; But I am still around. I'll always be around, And around and around and around and around. I fly a starship across the Universe divide. And when I get to the other side, I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can. Perhaps I may become a highwayman again. Or I may simple be a single drop of rain; But I will remain, And I'll be back again, And again, and again and again and again. If you've never heard the song, or haven't heard it in a while, find it on the web somewhere and pull it up. These guys, unique in their own right, really work well together as an equally unique four of a kind.  Now, something darker from me, written after Virginia State. the devil can find you anywhere it's part of living in the city we think the noise of sirens the fire trucks the ambulances the police cars their supercharged engines whoosh of air and power like a bear's long growl as they cross the creek just down the road; all the little murders the little killings that come so often it begins to seem like a stream of blood passing a flood of blood passing on weekends the nude woman found in a drainage ditch shot dead the baby in her crib shot dead as a drive by bullet penetrates the thin wall she sleeps by bar fights that lead to shootings in parking lots blood on oily asphalt shinning in the flashing lights domestic disturbances that rise from desperation separation from hope unhappiness and too much to drink ending in rage-deaths (I had a friend when I was thirteen, killed by his father, shot as he tried to protect his mother) so many that we loose count and it's just another half inch story on the back pages and when we think of it at all we shake our heads at the viciousness of it all imagine quite places where the sirens don't wail all night, where murder and tragedy and rage only happens on tv and we daydream like this until something happens like happened this week and we realize the devil can always find you anywhere and we see that death comes to quiet places too  Michael J. Sottak is a strong poet, visiting "Here and Now" for the first time. He included this note with his poem "We all travel somewhere for something. I think some few strays actually find it....but the definition of what you've found is dubious,,,,and fleeting....leave me no walls." There is a vital, driven element to his work that is reflected strongly in his note. southbound the wind drops the temperature not enough to stop the heat and the reggae man is singing marley as margueritas and women sweat on salt rims of stained glasses chilled raw conch and the hollow ring of marimbas you have you got any mamba in you do you can you lets awwright the train at three a.m. the who did you say where it was going or what do i care you smell like heaven god and whiskey  Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1955, grew up in Stafford, England, and attended the University of Liverpool where she received an honors degree in philosophy in 1977. Her poetry publications have received many awards She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature and currently lives in Manchester, where she lectures on poetry for the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. These two very funny poems are from her book The World's Wife. Mrs. Rip Van Winkle I sank like a stone into the still, deep waters of late middle age, aching from head to foot. I took up food and gave up exercise. It did me good. And while he slept I found some hobbies for myself. Painting. Seeing the sights I'd always dreamed about: The Leaning Tower The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal. I made little watercolors of them all. But what was best, what hands-down beat the rest, was saying a none-too-fond farewell to sex. Until the day I came home with this pastel of Niagara and he was sitting up in bed rattling Viagra. Frau Freud Ladies, for argument's sake, let us say that I've seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle. of three-for-a bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I'm as au fait with Hunt-the Salami as Ms. M. Lewinsky - equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the port sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don't get me wrong, I've no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife's best friend, the weapon, the python - I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis - not pretty.... the squint of its envious solitary eye....one's feeling of pity  Conflict, conflict, conflict - I report on the conflict in my life. exile my cat is not talking to me all because at the time of the dread quarterly flea collar exchange I was the villain holding her she does not forget these things being a conservative cat she does not welcome change finding every variation in her daily routine and every instance when her pillow is moved from one side of the room to another and even the best intentioned cat food brand change as threats to the natural order as defined in the kingdom of the cat as it happens I am a trans-border migrant between cat world and the more laid back realm of the dog so I'll just swim the river, so to speak, and spend some time with the dog regime until she gets over it dogs they'll put up with anything you know so long as you scratch their hairy tummy and don't disturb their naps without good reason like for example a new chew toy or a walk in the park cats should take notice  Charles Entekin was born in Alabama, took his B.A. from Birmingham Southern College and was a graduate student in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama. He completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Montana. Entekin was one of the founders of the Berkely Poets Cooperative and has taught at various colleges and universities and served as the Associate Director of the Center for Contemporary Writing at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California. These two poems are from his bookIn This Hour. 2642 Dana, Berkeley, California To buy an old house, with grace, with sloping ceilings, brass fixtures, cross beams and redwood cornices... Our neighbor told us the past owners had a fortress mentality; giant redwoods, Chinese and Japanese elms walled them in with greenery; that the woman of the house wore the pants in the family. Our first morning we are fog-bound in the ocean gray world of shadows and cold wet air. Nathan begins crawling in his first year of life. Occasional streaks of sunlight filter through the windows. I feel us in the bones of the house; your wrinkled belly, and pink, warm undersides of your breasts. Today I find myself siding with the woman, her tastes in small matters, curtains, princess trees, purple flowers by the back deck; everywhere the husband left things worse for his efforts, leaky roof, pressed sawdust floor beneath the caulked kitchen tile, back door with busted hinges. And I wonder at their lives, at how it must have been, want to take everything he did down, start again. But the house was here before the chaos that must have plagued their days. The dark red body of the wood, the wainscoting, like the forces of a language we live inside of, like the taste of you I carry in my mouth, like the touch of you, light, and moist with your longing for me, that place we come to in the dark. Night In Yosemite Valley I have come back weary, stand with wet hair after a shower, in moonlight, in the massive blackness of Cathedral Rock rising up behind us, blocking the stars. Here something holds me to the earth, I move slowly, awake to glass-like granite of boulders born millions of years ago, to a flitting in the dark gloaming, bats, and I feel the planet's deaths, how they have come and gone, the quick breaths of a saxophone, the seasons, and my own life suddenly stills. Listen, I want to slip reasonably out from the trees, cross meadows in the darkness, sneak past the shy deer, colorful backpackers, and climb up to the snow line. Tonight I know the open moon, and city lights that blink up and down the freeways call to someone else. I am alive; my childhood sparks like a filament in the dark. And I stand still in this thin moon, between childhood and old age, as if what comes next will be read from the edge of the wind, coldly, openly, as obvious as the moon over Basket Lake.  Dan Cuddy has been with us at "Here and Now" several times. Here's his latest. "act your age" i act because it is an act in a drama a comedy ha-ha the fool i hang myself upside down monkey of dreams view the world as if young how cracked the face in the mirror the road to hell  Brian Blanchfield lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches in the B.F.A. creative writing program at Pratt Institute of Art. His poems have appeared in various publications. This poem is from his first collection, Not Even Then . Two Moons The moon will all but disappear, which is to say the world is in the way again. It will take two hours to return to full, which is what we, in our way, call a whole half lit. I was stunned by lawn sculptures of waves outside the long lobbied Delano on South Beach, its oceanside wide open, its twenty-five-foot billowing white drapes sucked to my back and then not and then sucked again, its cavity fighting mine. The galaxy is all wrong with a nine-dollar cosmopolitan. I couldn't get daylight's alibi. Someone said gimme an O. I said gimme another. We couldn't get the bartender's attention. Obtundity nearly knocked me over. Dennis said he didn’t know about lunar ones but the wind that rushes in when the sun goes out brings the scent of your secret desire. At Grand Army Plaza, by nine lanes spinning into fewer, I make it to the middle. The moon is already phased to the size of an eyelash. or someone's distant hand cupped at his sunned brow, making you out. Poor white parenthesis, is everything inessential? should everything come between? Someone cheer the sidereal. But no one has outsprinted our coverlet to star in warmth on rock. I imagine it new, another tournament beginning, an open, and invitational.  I wrote this one day before yesterday for the poem-a-day workshop at the Blueline Forum. float float a check.... float an idea.... float my boat.... float down the river we call our time, through the shallows and the deep, through slow and lazy days and through rapids, rocks on either side, splash foam cold on our faces, warm in our eyes going, always, where the river goes the true condition of life no matter how we fight it up a creek without a paddle  Irish poet Paul Duncan published his first book of poems in 1967. Since then he has published fifteen more, including Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil, from which this poem is taken. Brazilian Presbyterian Ten days ago in Fortaleza, Evandro - a young Brazilian Presbyterian - Drove me to the sea. In a country with a population Of Two hundred million There was no one To be seen at the sea. I sat on the dune Under a coconut tree; Diving in and out of the South Atlantic; At fifty years of age A nipper in excelsis. Driving back into Fortaleza I put the question to Evandro: How would you - a young Brazilian Presbyterian - Imagine heaven? Driving on in silence, Caressing the steering wheel Of his Space Wagon, The Brazilian Presbyterian Began to think aloud: "Heaven.....is a place.... That....woud surprise you."  In our life today, we keep running so much it's hard to keep a connection to where we've been. Despite being generally careless with "things," there a few items that I keep close to me as a reminder of where I came from, my father's pocketknife and watch, my grandfather's ring and fancy clothes brush, and this old bed I sleep on. this old bed I sleep on the bed where my father was born one hundred years ago this summer, second child of Celeste and August amid the rocky hills and pecan and flowing streams in the little Texas-German town of Fredericksburg I sleep on the bed that has slept my family through two world wars and multiple wars of lesser scope, through eighteen presidents of the United States, some wise some not some equal to the needs of their time some not, through musical genre's from ragtime to hip-hop, though prohibition and the era of bathtub beer, through the gilded age the jazz age normalcy firebombing atom bombing getting bombed in the suburbs and getting sober with AA, through six presidential assassination attempts, death in Dallas death on the launching pad death in near earth orbit, kitty hawk to a man on the moon, the cries of the dead from famine from genocide from indifference of the ruling class from incompetence of the ruling class, through Bull Connor and his police dogs, through King and his dreams and his death on a motel balcony, through the triumph of good and the reemergence of evil, the cycle played out over and over again in the days of yellow journalism, through Murrow and Cronkite and Brinkley and Huntley on radio and tv and now new messengers on the web Wikipedia fact and Wikipedia fancy, truth swaying on a tumbling pedestal, lies flying in the wind, opinonators blowhards conspriracists and fools, through it all, all the times of reaping and sowing, the bed has calmed the nights through three generations of sleep, sex and midnight dreams, waiting now for the final sleep of this generation and the lying down to rest of the next  Setting aside any and all highbrow pretension, I must admit that this poem written by American movie icon Jimmy Stewart and read by him to Johnny Carson on the old Tonight Show is among the most moving thing I ever saw on television. Reading it now, I can see that you had to have there for the full effect, just proving, once again, the power of a really good reader. Beau He never came to me when I would call Unless I had a tennis ball, Or he felt like it, But mostly he didn't come at all. When he was young He never learned to heel Or sit or stay, He did things his way. Discipline was not his bag But when you were with him things sure didn't drag. He'd dig up a rosebush just to spite me, And when I'd grab him, he'd turn and bite me. He bit lots of folks from day to day, The delivery boy was his favorite prey. The gas man wouldn't read our meter, He said we owned a real man-eater. He set the house on fire But the story's long to tell. Suffice it to say that he survived And the house survived as well. On the evening walks, and Gloria took him, He was always first out the door. The Old One and I brought up the rear Because our bones were sore. He would charge up the street with Mom hanging on, What a beautiful pair they were! And if it was still light and the tourists were out, They created a bit of a stir. But every once in a while, he would stop in his tracks And with a frown on his face look around. It was just make sure that the Old One was there And would follow him where he was bound. We are early-to-bedders at our house - I guess I'm the first to retire. And as I'd leave the room he'd look at me And get up from his place by the fire. He knew where the tennis balls were upstairs, And I'd give him one for a while. He would push it under the bed with his nose And I'd fish it out with a smile. And before very long He'd tire of the ball And be asleep in his corner In no time at all. And there were nights when I'd feel him Climb upon our bed And lie between us, And I'd pat his head. And there were nights when I'd feel this stare Ad I'd wake up and he'd be sitting there And I'd reach out my hand and stroke his hair. And sometimes I'd feel him sigh and I think I know the reason why. He would wake up at night And he would know this fear Of the dark, of life, of lots of things, And he'd be glad to have me near. And now he's dead. And there are nights when I think I feel him Climb upon our bed and lie between us, And I pat his head. And there are night when I think I feel that stare And I reach out my hand to stroke his hair And he's not there. Oh, how I wish that wasn't so, I'll always love a dog named Beau.  Well that's it for this time. See you again next week. |
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