Midwestern Stories

I came across this booklet of Patricia Scott's poems entitled "A Quiet Place", sent to me by my sister years ago. They are stories about the place where I grew up, people I knew and adventures I shared with the "twin" born 21 months before me.

It astonished me, this collection. Not just because I knew the author. I think moreso because of the way she told stories. I was actually hearing the telling of them and they congered up the sense of a faraway time in my life.

They were quiet stories, like those we concocted sitting on the cool linoleum floor of our bedroom in the middle of a summer's night. My sister and I would do that: taking turns to whisper fantasies to each other while the south breeze slipped over the crackled sill of our bedroom window. We sat in the dark, pleating and repleating the blousey tops of our shorties with our fingers, listening in rapt attention and awaiting the latest plot twist - just invented and to be added to the next re-telling.

"An Ordinary Man

The man who lights the fireworks
lives up the street from me,
an ordinary man with rusty hair
and arms too long to match the rest of him,
but once a year
he volunteers to set the rocket of July
ablaze.

His daily trade
is laying brick and stone,
or so his wife said to a neighbor once.
Left to him,
we’d never know.
He seldom spares a word beyond ‘hello’.

Before my household wakes,
his old red pickup rattles by my window,
and back again as sunset
pleats the tent of day.
In summertime, with supper done,
he mows and combs his velvet lawn,
watering the roses
that sweetly stumble everywhere.
weekends
his children all pile in that truck,
freckle-dusted faces
pressed up against the windows,
eyes alight with secret destinations.
and every second Saturday,
when street lamps pin the night sky into place,
he and his wife descend the steps
where years ago a honeysuckle bush took root
and now twines in and out the rail.
(I think he takes her dancing.)
You’d think she was
a queen, the way he hands her down the steps
and guides her to the car,
the way he tilts his head
to catch her words.
I’ve seen him find her in the crowd,
when all the sparks have shimmered to the ground
after the fireworks display,
and how she laughs at him,
smeared up and down
with soot from flares
And celebration.

I wonder if they met that way,
One Independence Day when both were young,
And if she knew somehow he’d be a man
To fling the stars of earth
Out into space?

No ordinary man."

At first impulse, I would have said poetry bored me when I was younger. I mean, I didn't check out books of poetry at the library or sit under trees reading Burns or Dickinson. Now that I think back on it, however, I have always liked poetry. Mostly I was always drawn into the epics and to tales of adventure and daring: Evangeline and Hiawatha, both by Longfellow, come to mind.

Do you remember having to memorize Evangeline in school? I remember. And I remember especially the struggle it was for me to complete that assignment. It was so embarrassing to have to stand up and recite the poem in front of the whole class.

I also remember my fascination with sad Irish folk songs, Bob Dylan's storytelling and Joan Baez. Then I discovered A. A. Milne's poetry about Christopher Robin and his crew. I say "discovered", but there are snippets of them that seemed to be echoes from my childhood. I bought every one of the series and have them to this day.

Later, came the music of Joni Mitchell and The Band - how can you not say those lyrics are poetry? Architectural history class in college: I remember being completely taken away by Michelangelo's poetry. I copied his form and syntax once to attempt my own verse. It was an interesting and not so successful experiment. I loaned my book to a friend and never saw it again. It was replaced via Amazon.com not so long ago.

But all this poetry I am remembering - it all comes back in a warm and comforting way - the recollections of what I've read when minimally attentive or when totally immersed. It's got me so primed for more that I think, in closing, I will subject you to another of Patricia Scott's pieces. Perhaps you will, inspired by my tirade and, in retaliation, post one of your favorites in response.

"Driving Down a Country Road

Music I hear from a dance in the distance
drifts through the air,
sweet – unseen.

Blacktop and concrete curl out before me,
ribbons of silver
on dresses of green."

My friend likes the old Greek proverb that says: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” My question: "...and doesn't the world then need to nurture them? Do we just landscape and then let it die?"

I like that clean, modern look - the shining white surfaces, the sense of order and the peace of being untouched and new. Then I buy a sofa and I sit on every possible style. I need to sink into the cushions just right, have the frame fit my form. The distance from the back of the seat to the inside of my knees must be comfortable and not too large or too short. The fabric can't chafe or cause me to shiver as I pass my fingers over the armrests or slide across a cushion.

I can't stand leather that sticks to your thighs when you are sitting, so that you lose a layer of flesh when trying to extricate yourself from it's clutches.

Texture and color and having a sense of being welcomed to sit - all these are important qualities to look for in a sofa.

So, I can never truly be a modernist, I guess. I can never truly reside in a marble encased room, where the only plants in the room are the ones dried and squished in between layers of the plastic insets in the shoji screens.

And that brings us to the subject of staging and living a real life. I have another friend who just moved into a house in the hills. The lushness is tempered by the fact that this is a dry climate, so there are few deciduous trees and a lot of evergreens, lavender, non-flowering brush and little grass. Still the scene is rather verdant.

Her front yard was staged, it appears, between the property lines of cascading ivy and eucalyptus trees. She undoubtedly considered the house not JUST for the school district, but also for it's general environment. And yet, since she has moved in she hasn't watered anything on the property. She has pretty much all drought resistant plants, but even they are withering and give off the scent of vegetative death. A dry, brittle atmosphere surrounds you as you climb the stairs to the front stoop.

It appears you can't just stage something, then walk away...or in this case take the water away. The perfect photo of the house on the website doesn't live into perpetuity all by itself. It needs comfort, too. It won't bear the color and perfumes it's destined to provide without care and tending. Even if it were marble sculpture, it would gather dust and dirt and begin to look tawdry from neglect after awhile.

I love planting things. To plant a tree is even more enjoyable, because its impact is so great. But the care you must give a young tree is fairly complex. They don't easily spring from the ground and survive in many environments. You have to water them frequently at first, for long periods at a time and deeply, to encourage the roots to burrow further into the protective soil. Then you can't overwater them, but must switch to a regimen that is regular and appropriate. If you starve young trees, disease can more easily take over and they may not make it.

God bless the old men who plant shade trees for the future. God bless those that appreciate the initial act of staging and then go on to nurturing those trees. Even in Athens, trees burn if there is no water.