Three Poems Appearing in The Louisville Review

The Louisville Review (Fleur-de-Lis Press) have released their Fall 2019 issue and it is really stellar. I commend editor and friend Sena Jeter Naslund, Managing Editor Ellyn Lichvar (who was also guest poetry editor for the issue) and all the guest editors and staff, including guest fiction editor Flora Schildknecht who’s short story “Bad Signs” appears in Sisyphus Literary Magazine. I am happy to be in the company of poets like Jeff Worley (I was particularly fond of “Christmas in Abilene, 1957”) and authors like Aimee Lehman, whose short story “The Things We Leave Behind” won the 2019 Writer’s Block Prize in Fiction, but was as finely detailed as a memoir.

The hyperlink to purchase the issue is embedded in the beautiful cover image (“Cloud Shadows Falling on Plains” by T. Cowles) above.

I want to thank the editors for including my work in this issue. The impetus for being included was sharing and reminiscing with my college compatriot, Sena, the feelings I have and the understanding of who I have become after these last seven decades or so.  My poems are below, but I encourage you to check out the whole issue.

 

On Going Blind

Alone, in a world of sensation,
sneakers on asphalt,
whisper of traffic on wet pavement,
birdsong,
a goldfinch trilling,
mist and sun on my face,
cold breeze under a soft March sky,
trees dripping, Spring
drizzle on my hands.

Oh, the ease of it, the comfort
of all this weather washing over me.
Travelling through weather while blind
is like navigating by the stars.

I walk past the Safeway grocery
feeling for obstacles,
cracks in the sidewalk,
with my red-tipped cane.
My blind stick finds steps,
three steps up into Starbucks.

A stranger I can almost see
opens the door to let me in
and warm air rushes against my face,
and there is laughter
and tangled conversations,
a confusion of voices rising and falling,
and faint piano music though speakers,
and two giggling children scamper
around my knees,
and I try not to lose my balance
as I step gingerly to the counter
and order a Grandé Latté:
one honey, no foam.

I hold up my iPhone, tell the barista
I can’t find the scanner
and she takes my hand,
guiding me to it.
Her soft electric touch
against my skin
is almost overwhelming,
shocking in its immediacy,
its tenderness.
A sudden intake of breath,
I want to cry,
I am so grateful.

 

April 1, 2019, Gratitude Poem

I find myself grateful
for the vision I have left,
small as it is;
to walk Camino Sobrante
transiting from Geppettos to Starbucks.

Grateful to see color again
while showering:
a washcloth
suddenly appearing before me
in fulgent yellow.

Grateful to taste the food
that sparkles on the tongue,
dancing highlights
of unfamiliar odors and spices,
like turmeric or cumin,
that translate into saliva,
and I can swallow it down
without coughing.

Grateful for the words
crawling about in my veins,
as I sit with a poem in my mind
and turn it over and over
until the words fit
like they are supposed to
and do not lose
their music or magic.

Grateful to visit with friends
and delight in conversations
in which the present disappears
and the exchange becomes
a whole world of ideas
that manage to march
across the palimpsest of our minds
into some kind of alignment
that leads to understanding.

Grateful to sit with family
one-on-one
amidst the orange trees
in the Sky Garden,
around the fire pit,
when the noise
of the distracting world
is not intruding on our sharing
with each other.

Grateful to lie beside my wife
lifted out over the horizon
of our pillows and sheets
and feel her body tremble
with anticipation,
with touching.

Grateful to discover
in a new-found friend,
a love of sharing the difference
between what is real and what is not,
surfing waves,
navigating tides
of the world wide web,
grasping beauty
in a comforting office
under the blessing
and watchful gaze
of a fragmented mask of Buddha,
and a Devonian fossil
from the age of fishes.

When all we have
is this fragile appreciation
of a willingness
to love and be loved,
when whatever we have
we hold between us,
as easy as walking down a street
in the untrammeled sunshine.

 

Acknowledging Parkinson’s

…[T]he limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.–Ludwig Wittgenstein

I used to ignore it,
a blinking red light I drove past
without stopping.

The tremor
was like a squirrel crossing the road,
indecisive,
running left, then right,

an ant
that had lost the scent,
no way to get back to the nest,
wandering aimlessly
across the unmapped countertop.

A rebellion was going on,
a soldier gone AWOL,
breaking ranks,
risking the whole,

a computer virus,
a threat to my identity
stealing my passwords,
making decisions
without me.

I try to delete it
but it comes back on its own.

In my lucid dreams,
I am unsure
who is in control.

A woman wearing bright red lipstick
offers a taste of something
dripping from her outstretched fingers.
I see her coming forward,
inviting,
but suddenly know
she is not real.
She stops,
fragmenting, shimmering,
disorganizing.

I stare but do not see her,
lost in the unrelenting
flow of sensations,
in the trembling
of the universe around her.

First Publication 2019 The Louisville Review