Madison Street: Slow Burn

 We had a coal furnace in our Madison Street house's cellar. It was a major event for us kids when the coal truck came to deliver. It was less fun for my father, who would have to get up during the night to put more coal into the furnace.  And when the metal containers were full of ashes, as the eldest child, I was the one to help him carry the ash cans to the car and up to the dump. I can still smell those snowy woolen mittens drying on the clanking and gurgling radiator in the entrance hall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slow Burn

 

The children miss their favorite swimming hole

up at the creek, now autumn’s settled in.

This afternoon, one of Glen Alden’s trucks

has brought a mix of pea and chestnut coal.

They’ll chute it down into our cellar bin—

four tons, just over eighty-seven bucks.

We all watch as the monster dump-box lifts

and tilts. The blue-black slow-burn payload shifts

then rumbles to the dank, dark space below.

Our radiators, working full-time till

next March, will clank and gurgle, dry the snow

from woolen mittens, intercept the chill

creeping into the house as blizzards blow

pale spoondrift down our street from Beaumont hill. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madison Street: Sputnik

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: In "Madison Street", I have often taken more than one memory or experience and combined them into one sonnet. I often change the gender of the persons, and never use real names (except for an upcoming poem "Nanny Brown"). This is a poem of wonder, of innocence, and, sadly, of loss.

 

Sputnik

 

October sundown, nineteen fifty-seven.

Frank De Luca stands outdoors because

of something curious orbiting above.

Just five, he still believes in saints and heaven,

the Easter Bunny, Batman, Santa Claus,

the Golden Rule, God’s everlasting love.

His dad points to the Soviet satellite

whose certain, silent, drifting, line of flight

convinces them the moon and maybe Mars

could someday be a new frontier for man.

But Frank will soon discard all avatars

except for one. Bereaved, the boy will scan

the endless arc for signs of shooting stars,

and in his dreams soar! soar! like Peter Pan.

 

 

 

 

Madison Street: 25 Sonnets

My childhood home on Madison Street

 

 

 

From 1956 to 1972 I lived on Madison Street, Wilkes-Barre, PA, in the 100-block between Beaumont and Butler Streets. "Madison Street" - a series of twenty-five sonnets,  - recounts some of my earliest memories of growing up in that neighborhood. The series appears in its entirety in my book Pointing Home (Kelsay Books, 2019).

I will be posting various sonnets from "Madison Street" on my blog, The Wonderful Boat (www.cathychandler.blogspot.com) in the coming weeks. It may not be regular, since I'll be traveling to my home in Punta del Este, Uruguay next week.

"Overture" is the first of the twenty-five sonnets.

Madison Street

 

Overture

 

Imagine this: a narrow one-way street

in northeast Pennsylvania long ago,

between two Asian wars, a neighborhood—

a little world of sweet and bittersweet,

where children didn’t know they didn’t know,

and things were either bad or they were good.

We didn’t get the gist of dirty jokes;

we actually believed the monkey hoax.

So, here’s to us who didn’t know the score,

who idolized Hank Aaron and Annette;

who pilfered Slo-Pokes from the corner store

or from an aunt, a Newport cigarette;

whose plain speech never lapsed to metaphor,

and party lines comprised our Internet.

Poetic Murder Mystery?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, murdered? Click HERE or HERE for more information. Pablo Neruda's real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.

My poem, "Exhuming Neruda" was first published in New Verse News in 2013, and is included in my Richard Wilbur Award-winning collection The Frangible Hour. 

Exhuming Neruda

 

 

Poet’s story becomes a murder mystery: Chile exhumes Pablo Neruda’s remains

(CNN Headline, April 10, 2013)

 

 

At Isla Negra, Neftalí, you sang of joy and pain,

of poverty, Matilde, birds, of artichokes and rain.

 

And once at Isla Negra, they searched each corner of

your hideaway, but all they found was bread and wine and love.

 

And now at Isla Negra, they are digging up your bones;

they’ll fly them to the capital, then rearrange the stones.

 

At Isla Negra, Neftalí, far from the abattoirs,

a leaf drifts to the earth amid the keen of grass and stars.

The dogs of Ushuaia . . .

 

Ushuaia, capital of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

I wrote this poem after my visit to Ushuaia in January 2004. It was first published as "The Dogs of Ushuaia" in Umbrella Journal, Summer 2007, and is included in my first book, Lines of Flight.

"the prince who sails upon the air" is the albatross, as described by Charles Baudelaire in his poem L'albatros.

Ushuaia

 

In search of the exotic I had flown

as far as Ushuaia. I would see

the penguin and the lenga, for I’d grown

accustomed to the birch, the chickadee.

 

I crossed the Beagle Channel, met the prince

who sails upon the air, immersed my mind

in images I trusted would convince

myself I’d left the commonplace behind:

 

the Southern Cross at midnight, and the way

the cordillera bears from west to east,

how wind and weather shift throughout the day –

a poet’s fodder, at the very least.

 

And yet, in retrospect, what I recall

most often when I need the proper noun

is not Olivia or Martial,

but intimations of a downhill town:

 

a bleak, forsaken prison, silent bogs,

a landscape ravaged by the beaver, frail

impromptu housing, countless scrawny dogs,

a monument to the Malvinas, stale

 

abandoned factories that bear the brunt

of empty promises, a roadside shrine

to plaster saints, a tourist’s waterfront,

complete with tourists from the steamship line.

 

Though many miles from home, this land would show

that there is really nothing new, indeed,

under the sun, beyond the point of no

return, beyond the calafate seed,

 

beyond all hemispheres, beyond each pole,

beyond the boundaries nations call their own.

The dogs of Ushuaia hound my soul

and gnaw upon it, as they would a bone.

 

[for the Wikipedia article on Ushuaia, click HERE]

"Do not long for lullabies in the breakers . . ."

 

I wrote these two poems in Uruguay in 2011 several months after my mother's death on her 81st birthday. The poems were first published in Angle Poetry Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1, Summer 2012, and subsequently in my second full-length collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis, 2014). 

Why did I choose Achelois for my second poem?  Click HERE to find out. The end-rhyme of "The Dawning" also provides a clue.

God-willing, in ten days I'll be back in my home by the South Atlantic.

Two Poems of the Sea

I.                  The Dawning

 

The sea, relentless in her give-and-take,

her rising, falling waves that seem to make

amends in silence just before they break

ashore, reflects the instant I awake —

 

a moment of reprieve, when every snake

I realize is fantasy or fake;

when life’s a bowl of cherries. Piece of cake.

(There must have been some terrible mistake . . .)

 

And then the crash. The undertow. The ache.

 

 

 

II.               To a Minor Goddess

 

Wave on wave all heaving and arch and spillage;

blue and green and grey overlaid with silver.

Christmas Day — my saviour the South Atlantic.

            Triumph. Surrender.

           

All my gods have failed me, yet Achelois,

you have watched me wavering in the billows;

you have heard me weeping the wail of seagulls,

            and you have answered:

 

Do not look for eyes in the dancing diamonds;

do not long for lullabies in the breakers;

do not lend more tears to the salt of oceans’

             flotsam and jetsam.

 

Listen for the crash. See the string of seafoam

lace that hems the sand with a hush and whisper.

Silence. Nothing. Everything. Constellations.

            Guardian angels.       

           

"the delicate forensics of the heart"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is my sonnet, "Writ" describing the quest for artistic inspiration, as well as playing on the definition of the word "writ" (a simple past tense and past participle of the word "write"), and as a legal term : a legal document that orders a person to do a particular thing, as in a search warrant.

"Writ"was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the late Paul Stevens, Editor, The Chimaera in 2008, and also nominated for "Best of the Net" that same year. The poem has appeared in The HyperTexts, Sonnetto Poesia, The Chimaera, and The Flea, and is part of my first collection of poems, Lines of Flight.

Who were the tenants of the now-vacant room?

Writ

 

“Foole,” said my Muse to me, “Looke in thy heart and write.”

– Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophel and Stella”

 

 

 

And so I searched, but all that I could see

to write about was this:  a vacant room

whose occupants once held a tenancy

of woodstream orchids, where an old perfume

clings to its quiet corners, knows my key

will turn, a frequent caller to a tomb

already ransacked, sifting through debris

only a fool like me would dare exhume.

 

I’ve served my warrant, Muse, and I am pleased

to tell you that I’ve found the smoking gun

you always knew was there. So I have seized

it, tagged and bagged it. Now my work is done.

This evidence I can at last impart –

the delicate forensics of the heart.

 

"Very Far South" Accepted for Publication!

 

 My poem, "Very Far South" has been accepted for publication in the upcoming issue of Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art. 

A ruddy turnstone in Punta del Este, Uruguay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see a ruddy turnstone in action, click HERE. 

The story that inspired the poem is HERE.

Lest We Forget

 Remembrance Day, November 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthgall

—in memory of Uncle Tommy and his son, my cousin Tommy Jr.

 

 

Two Thomases, a father and his son,

lie in a cemetery on a hill

that overlooks the Susquehanna. One,

a gunner with a young man’s iron will

to live, bailed from his doomed B-24,

endured Camp Shumen’s beatings, moldy bread,

survivor guilt, the aftershocks of war,

a rough divorce; yet worse times lay ahead.

 

The Army CNO. The folded flag.

The Valium.The oceans of Jim Beam.

The names imprinted on a metal tag.

The little boy in the recurrent dream.

I used to fear him. Now I realize

the sense behind his reek and glassy eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas F. Smith, Jr.

  1945-1968

 

 [Published in my Richard Wilbur Award-winning collection The Frangible Hour - University of Evansville Press, 2016. "Earthgall" is the fourth poem in the series "Days of Grass".]

My November Poem

 

 

Purple finch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November

 

November is a season all its own —

a month of saints and souls and soldiers. Snow

will soon whiteout a fallacy of brown.

It is a month of waiting, lying low.

 

November is a season all its own —

a time for turning back the clock as though

it’s useless to pretend. A dressing-down.

Thin ice entices me to touch and go.

 

November, remnant of the year, is here

with dazzling dawns that dissipate to grey;

here in the tilting asymmetric branch

and sharp note of a towering white pine where

the pik and churlee of a purple finch

can either break a heart or make a day. 

 

 

 

[first published in Measure, Vol VIII, Issue 1, 2013, and in my book Glad and Sorry Seasons, Biblioasis Press, Canada 2014]

 

 

 

 

Multiverse

 

Notes:  Multiverse. George F. R. Ellis, philosopher and cosmologist, remains skeptical of the existence of the multiverse. Nevertheless, he writes: Parallel universes may or may not exist; the case is unproved. We are going to have to live with that uncertainty.— from “Does the Multiverse Really Exist?”, Scientific American (August 2011).

Beth Davidson was a childhood friend of John Lennon and the inspiration for the line about the pretty nurse in the song Penny Lane. Beth Davidson went on to marry John’s best friend, Pete Shotton, and she remained a member of the Beatles’ close circle of friends until her death from cancer at the age of thirty-five.

"Multiverse", a villanelle, was first published in Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays, Spring 2017,  Volume 7.2 and in my collection Pointing Home (Kelsay Books 2019).

 

 

 

Multiverse                             

 

i.m. Beth Davidson Shotton

 

And though she feels as if she’s in a play,

she is anyway.―John Lennon, Penny Lane

 

 

The pretty nurse in Penny Lane is dead.

She played her part until the curtain fell.

Or is her troupe booked somewhere else instead?

 

Although those notes are earworms in my head—

the trumpet solo and the engine bell—

the pretty nurse in Penny Lane is dead.

 

The barber and the banker long since fled

the roundabout. The fireman as well.

Can they be working somewhere else instead?

 

The neighborhood’s a tourist trap, it’s said;

no poppies like the ones she used to sell.

The pretty nurse in Penny Lane is dead.

 

Or is she? Maybe we have been misled,

and other Penny Lanes spin, parallel,

in quantum time, to other tunes instead.

 

I’m clinging to one final, chronon shred

of hope. As far as anyone can tell,

the pretty nurse in Penny Lane is dead,

and may be living somewhere else instead.

 

"may comets swirl in the leaves"

 

 

Note: Ti Kuan Yin, Guanyin, or Iron Goddess of Mercy, is one of the most prized oolong teas. This poem is a Fibonacci sonnet with ostensible mathematical references to the Argand Diagram and Huygens's Principle of Diffraction. 

"To the Iron Goddess of Mercy" was first published in Frostwriting, Issue 12, 2014 and in my award-winning book The Frangible Hour (University of Evansville Press, 2016). 

Click HERE for info on the Fibonacci Sonnet.

 

To the Iron Goddess of Mercy

light

ze-

roes on

the table

its wavelets bending

falling crest over trough into

the imaginary axis of reality

 

as I take my Krazy-Glued teacup out of hiding

may the kettle whistle softly

may the day stay calm

may comets

swirl in

the

leaves

 

My gift to you . . .

 

 

 "Bequeathal" was first published in The Raintown Review, Volume 7, Issue 2, December 2008, and subsequently in my Canadian collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis, 2014).

 

Bequeathal

For my children

 

Unlike the lilac bush that knows

its spikes will weather winter’s snows,

I’ve yet to find the wherewithal

to rightly come to terms with fall.

 

In forests full of empty nests,

withered boughs, November guests,

I seek but find no feathered thing,

no green remembrances of spring.

 

All that I have, now summer’s gone,

are love notes from a lexicon.

My gift to you, this fragile bud —

inheritance of ink and blood.