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.
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| 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".]
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| 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]
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.
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
"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
