Mark Lucker – Page 9 – The Poetry Marathon

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A woman I know
mid-fifties
went protesting
first timer

missing out as
teenager
with strict parents
she wanted
‘self-fulfillment’
wanted understanding
of what had been
never missed

Seeing her a few
days later I
asked if she found
what she
had been seeking

“Yes and no” she
smiled,
ruefully
“I fell in with a
group of
college kids who
poured milk
on my face”
quickly adding
“for the tear gas!”

Her voice trailed.
“it wasn’t
at all
about me”

I nodded.
She beseeched

“Please tell me
that I really didn’t
go there for me”

I nodded again
“I think you did”
as she frowned
“Now, here you are.”
I concluded

We stood there
silently until a
summer breeze
kicked up dust

“Maybe you’re right”
she said, smiling
with new buoyancy

“I’m going to need
some more
goddamned milk.”

Just my type

It only had one font
though two were available
make an error, you’d
have to erase it or
simply start over again

It had bells to warn you
of impending
margin disasters
clicked like a zipper
when aligning or
removing paper

There were
‘portable’ versions
that induced more hernias
than Pulitzers

And yet
and yet
Rrrrrrr – ca-CHING!

Next line, please.

Intimately fond

She comes to me more
in memories than dreams
there, not there
still there

To know she is not lost
loses its sting when
I remember that I am
also not lost to her

What is not lost
cannot need to be found
why we are both
… and neither..?

still there always
she pops into
memories more often
than dreams
less frequently when
she shouldn’t
show up at all

When all is said and done
a romance that was ours
can be framed at its
core, Shakespearean best
‘Neither a borrower
nor a lender be’

At least we can honestly say
‘no royalty was harmed
in the making of
this affair’

Belonging

“‘In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

I knew from a very young age
my connection to the land
No small feat for a city kid

Every summer would find me at
Horseshoe Lake, nestled in
the Minnesota Northwoods

Grandparent’s retirement haven
became the same to me
once allowed my freedom to roam

By age nine I knew every inch of
those Mission Township woods
sounds, smells, tastes, textures

Woods have always called me
beckoning when I needed them
embracing me when I arrived

An inquisitive kid, I knew who
I could ask about anything:
Mr. Hanson knew fishing

His wife was the bird expert
their neighbor, Mrs. Wheeler
was my go-to for stars, sky

Mr. Friest understood my
spiritual nature, connections
Mr. Holm found me amusing

Old Man Reid knew wood
grandma, grandpa knew a lot
about a whole bunch of things

They all knew me and how I took
to the woods, the water, them.
They knew what the woods did.

‘This kid from the big city?
Here is where he belongs.
This kid is one of us.’

Pogo

A wonderful device is the pogo stick
you can go up and down and do it really quick
As an exercise device, its role is concise
and at sixty-one I jump in a very small clique!

Traveler

‘And then it was time to start uphill toward another morning and another home.’

I have never walked uphill toward morning
morning, to me is always on the downhill
the easy coast homeward after taking
full advantage of the solace of nighttime

Heading for home, from the darkness
sun on a new day’s start as another fades
even a bad night heading to another day
cannot dim what passes for reclamation

I am not Saul on the road to Damascus
there is no conversion, and while I claim
epiphany it is what I experience every time
I walk the night away like it was an old friend

Which it certainly can be claimed to be.
I am a friend of the night, no fear in me in
what lies in the darkness; I live in the light
frolic in the darkness, letting my soul loose

Around campfires, I was the one always
rolling his eyes at what passed for macabre –
tales told breathlessly, anxious young souls
wanting more – “And then? And then?!”

And as I start on the downward swing home
tailwind, momentum, gravity – take your pick –
pushing me onward it is home I always see there
just in front of me, at the bottom of whatever hill

Unfound

I know of the place
grasp the times
but not
the
places
little of
their times

Russian Jews
my grandparents came
to America as
part of the diaspora

From where, precisely
remains unknown to me
‘country of origin’
Russia –
imprecise vastness
the only clue on
grandfather’s
immigration papers

grandmother’s only
identifier
scrawled in midwife hand
on my father’s
birth certificate as
‘Austro-Hungarian’
as vague a delineation as
‘over there’

Both of them died
just before
I was born
neither met my mother
per same timing

my grandparents,
my father
his lone brother
not at all close
dad, forever
tightlipped about
family
my only cousins
incommunicado

I know of the time in
which
grandma and grandpa –

Grandmother, Grandfather?
Papa and Nana?
Zyde and Bubbe?
Which would they
have preferred?

I can surmise only that
they lived all
the harshness
that was being a Jew
had to offer
there, then

Time and place
obliquely sort of specific

Roiled by revolution
and hatred
the region dislodged its
Ashkenazim
to many places

My grandparents to
New York, then
Minnesota
Chicago
back to St. Paul
finally back to Brooklyn

All the while they toted
their
mystery, misery in lost
steamer trunks
and secrets

At least I think they did.

What they did as new
Jews in America is
unknown to me
where they did it, I know
how, why – pertinent
details
what the times were
lost to me
lost to time

City directory entries
easy mouse clicks away
other answers…?

Where they
came from what
they left
I can only speculate
anecdotal stories repeated
by other immigrants
preserved in
various forms, places
I can find.

The essentials on
Morris and Fannie
ethereal questions in
search of solid evidence

Being Jewish
I am learning while also
longing
to return to
places I have
never known to try
and understand
what I have lost
having never had it at all
seems selfish
yet nags at me
persistent in its guise of
closure
I know will only lead to
more openings

Like Dorothy in immigrant
American Oz
I feel there truly is
no place like home but
without even knowing
where home
may truly be

I am at the mercy
of a place I can’t even
find on a map
yet that is very much alive
crystal clear and calling
in the
deeper reaches of
my soul.

Shadows, cast

The way a shadow is cast
by the moon
differs from that
of the sun or
back alley streetlight

for all of the romance
the moon
the sun
have to offer
true love oft times
lurks in the
noir of relationships
where black
and white
seamlessly shift to
shades of gray and
back again
without seeming rhyme
nor reason

Until the ultimate
denouement
when all is illuminated
in ever-varying
shades of darkness
masquerading
as moonlight
and clarity
of dawn

Agenda

If you can’t serve it by the slice
it isn’t real coffee
so sayeth myself
to anyone who will listen
If I have guests, it also serves as
warning-shot across the bow
for those faint of arabica heart

It is a good day when the java
comes from the carafe like
the meat off a Thanksgiving bird
plated in a mug that I can take
outside, my backyard deck

fragrances mingling
fresh brew, grass-caressing dew
cream and sugar
sparrow chatter and crow caw
a day coming to life
me coming to life
life coming to life

I need a vintage
percolator to rub
conjuring up barista genie
granting me my every
caffeinated desire
But I will settle for
more mornings
more nights with which
to anticipate
more mornings
more coffee
times to contemplate
the ‘how’ practicality
of making my coffee
sliceable

Love Poem

Love poem

I wrote you a love poem
stuck it in a book
you were reading
you read the poem
used to mark the spot to
continue reading the book.

Sometimes love means
never having to dog-ear.