Out Back On 5146 Cisne

I’m From Out Back

Out back, behind my house was a safe place,

secured by general fear of my father

and “mines” laid by my dog Blue.

Those are the years we had monster tomato plants.

Lilac shrubs hold much promise,

Blooming in vibrant purple, emitting the smell of heaven itself,

Lilacs are also a tease, blooming only in May,

They taunt little boys who wish to keep their mothers amply supplied

with fragrant blooms stuffed into every household water glass.

Out back is where my dad took me to play catch,

pitching fastballs with all his might at my trembling mitt,

never catching on to my desire to be inside with the brothers Grimm.

Later, when he hurt his back and I took over mowing the grass,

I felt like I was becoming the man of the house.

Out back is where I first learned about creatures.

I ran after squirrels and spotted blue jays and robins, cardinals and blackbirds.

Once I even saw an oriole; it was in the mouth of our cat, Tom.

I dug earthworms, pinched ants, poked at garden spiders and squashed daddy longlegs.

Once, a stray female dog in heat came around Old Blue,

but that is a different story.

After I grew up and gained a family of our own, I still occasionally visited out back,

hanging around the two oak pillars in the middle of the yard

until I could catch a whiff of my childhood.

After a few years, the oak trees died and dad hired some men to cut them down;

it marked the beginning of an end.

Eventually, the shrubs out back ran their course and died out;

my brother Mike claims that they died because Old Blue chewed them too much.

With the oaks and lilacs gone, and Old Blue buried out back,

the smell of my childhood was practically gone.

Not so long ago,

I heard my own children talking about their childhood,

how they used to play out back when we lived on Mallory Street.

They talked about their dog Murphy, of digging in the sand, climbing on the garage,

eating mulberries and smelling the tomato vines in the hot sun.

I knew then my own experiences were seeds,

which died out back in my life, to spring up again in theirs.

My Grandfather, as Defined by Francis William Bourdillon

Stephen D. Rabourn (1902 – 1996)

What I see in my grandfather

as he sits in front of reruns of old Lawrence Welk broadcasts,

believing the old bandleader to be still jazzing it up with the Lennon Sisters,

is nothing more than the remnant of a man’s life.

I went camping once with six other guys and one tent

when we just crashed after partying by a big fire following a concert.

The next time I let my dad drag me up to Kalkaska, I notice

my grandfather is the same whitish grey as the burned out log.

He rides next door to my uncle’s house on his lawnmower.

Sitting motionless, he is a bent statue of ancient clay

on a clunky old machine with barely enough power to conquer the gopher hills;

I wonder if he still has hopes beneath his cap.

Some decades ago he worked for the county road commission

but he retired before men ever walked on the moon,

so I suppose it’s fitting he was born before men ever flew in airplanes.

Is there such a thing as being too old?

I search my mind for scenes of my relationship with him,

but I can only call up the oft repeated “Happy Birthday Grandpa” story

no one wants to hear anymore and images of him meandering in his garden.

His life was already in storage before I knew him.

My dad was never a storyteller so I don’t clearly see

Scenes from pre- or post-war Kalkaska

except for the house, sitting on beams with bark still on them,

roofed with tar paper, and sided with shingles.

I heard the garage was once a beautiful kitchen.

My grandmother had left him for post-war Detroit,

a big man everyone called “Fitz,” when my dad was just ten.

My grandfather let his essence drain into the soil

with the water he put on his garden.

His shell simply continued, lacking the energy or will to live or die.

With little else to occupy my time on our bi-annual visits to nowhere,

I examined Petoskey stones and Red-cap moss and read the poem on the wall.

Poetry is sometimes too dense for a child, or maybe it’s the other way around;

I read that poem at least a hundred times

but it didn’t gain hold of my mind until I married.

“The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole world dies when love is done.”

--Francis William Bourdillon (b.1852)

My Love is Not a Rose

My love is not a rose.

I cut a rose once and placed her in a reasonable vase,

but it was as good as over the moment I handled her

and she just sat in my apartment looking sad

until I had to put her out,

all the while shaking my head at the waste.

My love is not a verdant garden.

I get lost in gardens when they are too expansive;

Abundance of delights and variation within species

leave me unable to remember everyone’s name.

Every time I meet another one with a colorful, beaming face

I forget the one I was interested in the day before.

My love is a simple green ivy.

I was looking for another blushing smile when I happened upon her;

she was all green without a single bloom to advertise her presence.

When I looked closer, though, I discovered fascinating patterns in her leaves

so I carefully moved aside the dirt she was living in and put her in my home

where she slowly took over my space.

Write

reeds growing in blistering heat along a fading brown river

cut at an angle and pressed into soft clay, make wedge shaped impressions;

rows and columns record bushels and measures of the day’s harvest.

thin brushes dipped in soot-based ink spread carefully on papyrus

make pictograph characters filling forty foot scrolls of real paper,

noting the assets and liabilities of landowners.

bamboo fountain pens spell out imperial decrees on paper and parchment,

while letters of love and devotion to be delivered in secret travel with

geometry, history, rhetoric, and the inspired words of God.

quill pens forming slanting letters and emerging cursive

mark out dramatic plays and comedies, and maps of new lands,

while kings and lords express words of encouragement or threat.

pencil lead, metal points, steel nibs with iridium tips

draw specifications for locomotives, incite populations to revolt

and arrange solemn words meant to be intoned over bloodied battlefields.

ball points, plastic, cheap and accessible tools

made by the million to record a phone message while you were out

and scrawl lists of vegetables, canned goods and toiletries to be picked up.

electronic pads, poked at by thumbs skewed by steering wheels,

flash coded abbreviations of the elegant English language

sharing updated social calendars of the illiterati.

Raisin Bran Man

Sir Quilliam the African Pygmy hedgehog

is a bizarre little animal.

Who would buy a pet that can't survive

in a sub-seventies environment?

i run and run and run and run

i jump off my wheel to see if

there is food where i now am

Shrieking!  Cold Water!  How?  Shower!

Showering in my clothes,

senses overloaded, pain shifting around my torso.

OW  OW  OW  OW  OW

My hands have melted.

the man was fixing my heating tower

with boiling water and tupperware

where did he go?

where is my raisin bran?

A fireman undresses me, his solid arm supporting my good shoulder.

I walk to the ambulance in a sheet, snow and ice outside.

The medic hits me with morphine.

OW OW OW OW OW

My hands have melted.

He hits me again, and yet again.

Weird.

Patients in emergency look scared when they see me.

Why is mom here?  Who called my sister-in-law?

"Sorry.  No visitors in here!"

I was brought by a silent platoon of nurses in white

to the stainless table.

Time to wash.

"Do you want us to stop?"

No.  Do what you are going to do.

"Do you want to stop now?"

No.  No.  No.  Do it all now.

Stainless scissors on raw flesh, cutting away the wasted layers.

Another hit of morphine while I puke into a tub.

                        We wash.

                        It isn't ok.

                        We wash.

I lay placidly in my hospital bed, wrapped from waist to neck, including my best arm.

Slowly, I feel myself dropping off to sleep as nurse Kurt settles me in.

As I slip away I think about Sir Quilliam,

the African Pygmy hedgehog, and I remember

how his little claws clung to the bars of his cage

as he waited for the Raisin Bran man to come.