This calm evening,
wind is barely breathing,
leafless trees standing firm,
bark bones slicked by mist,
street lamps playing
in long comet dot smears
on the black satin drives,
everyone warm inside.
One of my earlier poetic posts this week was very cold within, so this one is a bit warmer, don't you think, despite the fact that it is very cold and rainy/sleety without.
The weather of late has me channeling T.S. Eliot, which made me think of this poem last night:
The Winter Evening Settles Down
The winter evening settles down
with smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
the grimy scrapsof withered leaves about your feet
and newspapers from vacant lots:
the showers beat
on broken blinds and chimney-pots,
and at the corner of the street
a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
... Last night, driving out for more caffeine due to more work yet at the desk, I had just finished my piece and re-read Elliot's piece.
I'm anal that way. One thought leads to another, and I couldn't just get up from the desk after my piece was written, up and out of me, because my brain was going, Wait, uummmm, that poem by Elliot, the one Professor Bozo made us discuss TO DEATH!!!!!!! in his lit. intro. class several semesters ago. The class I took for "fun" because of its poetry component, and then he made us discuss poems to such a point, that I wanted to stick pins in my eyes and never write or read a poem again! The poem that so speaks to the winter season pending in the heart!!! That poem, where is it?!?!?!? Damn it, what's the title?!?!?!
And then I, and my fucked up brain, get up and I go right to the exact bookshelf (even though it's been moved AND rearranged over the weekend), where there rides the big fat Lit. text, where I can just about "see" the poem on the page, and I flip right to it (making a note to order a collection of Elliot from Amazon, because I don't seem to have one), and I plop back down in my chair, and I'm in rapture, for the short time I take to relive the poem, the steaming and stomp, stomp warm breathing of the horses, the lighting of the lamps .....
... and then I go out, and drive through the misty black night in the small village I live in. Yeah, village. I love that term, and I do in fact live in a "village" as opposed to a "town" or a "city," by zoning and such, and I'm probably the only one in this town ... ooops village, that gets a kick out of that wording, because for me, nothing is ever simple and words rock long and hard into each and every night, dancing till dawn!
Anyways .... driving the rain-slick streets, two days' past garbage pickup day, I see things that make me want to write a parody poem on my own work, and the work by Elliot. I wanted to put in it all the unique things that are still sitting curbside that the garbage man did not take ... a broken chair, a Little Tykes picnic table, the unfortunate pile of now wet and soggy moving boxes that were not properly flattened/cut/bound for pickup, a footstool, etc. and the streets are littered here and there with chunks of broken pumpkin heads, poor things, where is the vinegar and brown paper when you need it?!?!?!
Absolute crazy BLISS, as I rock and roll through the quiet darkened streets, get my coffee, and go back to my warm office downstairs, where I can hear the thump of the surround-sound on the big screen upstairs, where my daughter is watching "Sweeney Todd" for the second or third time this week, and still NOT CLEANING HER ROOM, and the dog is snuggled in a warm furry pile on her lap, so glad that she's not cleaning her room, and so am I!!!! ... I mean, it's "Sweeney Todd," for crying and loving out loud!
And I smile for a long while ...
