Nelson Poetry, aaduna in exile, spring 2021 issue, Vol. 10 No. 1

 

About the Poet

Howard Nelson (photo provided)

Howard Nelson lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  He taught for many years at Cayuga Community College, where he is now Professor of Humanities Emeritus. He is the author of Robert Bly:  An Introduction to the Poetry, and editor of Earth, My Likeness:  Nature Poetry of Walt Whitman, and On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell:  The Wages of Dying.  His poetry collections include Creatures, Bone Music, The Nap by the Waterfall, and most recently That Was Really Something (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2018). 

DROPPING THE PICKLE

On our walk around the neighborhood, 

we stop and have lunch at the Lincoln Diner.   

It is not too early, at three years old, 

for her to be introduced to the pleasures 

of this place.  The small diner  

on Lincoln Street 

with its clutch of tables 

and its counter lined with people 

of all ages, and various vocations— 

college students, guys in work clothes,  

a pair of cops, a couple of guys  

in business suits, and old guys  

wearing baseball caps— 

male and female, white and of color, 

large and small. 

The waitress is well tattooed. 

A democratic crowd.   

Walt Whitman would like it here,  

and not just because it’s named Lincoln. 

 

But this is not an exercise in diversity training.

It’s a diner.  She is so small,

about three feet tall,

but she strides along,

and when I lift her onto her seat,

without saying anything, she checks things out,

and seems to think this is pretty cool,

sitting on a diner stool,

people all around.

Luckily we have found two open

just opposite the grill.

I direct her attention there,

I tell her to watch the man

who is cooking, flipping

eggs and bacon and burgers.

He is obviously a master, a professional

of long experience, and he moves

smoothly, in his casual clothes,

sweat pants and t-shirt,

gliding through his orders, pushing the pile

of home fries back and forth,

turning them over and tapping his spatula

on the hot greasy grill.

 

My little granddaughter watches him

from her perch on the stool, and I say,

“Oh look, there’s your sandwich, he’s making it,”

as he puts it on to sizzle—

grilled cheese on whole wheat—

while nearby my two eggs are deftly cracked,

they will be over easy—

and soon he turns around and puts our plates

on the counter in front of us and says,

in a friendly way, “There you go.” 

Wow.  Profound.

Somebody cooks food

right in front of you, and then gives it to you….

 

Her sandwich comes cut in two triangles,

with a little pile of potato chips, and a dill pickle.

She goes for the chips.

She picks them up one by one

and places them in her mouth.

I suggest a bite of sandwich

and lift one triangle to her lips.

She takes a bite.  But the chips

are the first order of business.

OK.  When the chips are gone,

she moves on to the pickle.

It is long and limber in her small fingers,

and after the first nibble of the tip,

the slippery pickle slips from her grip

and falls to the floor.  It lies there

on the grimy tile below her stool.

She looks down.  She looks

at me, with an undecided, troubled

look.  What’s the proper response

to the loss of your pickle?

Is it an occasion for tears?

She’s not sure.  I say to her,

“Oh, you dropped your pickle. 

That’s OK.  Sometimes that happens.”

And she takes it to heart, the troubled look

goes away, and she says,

“Sometimes that happens,”

calmly, with a philosophical tone almost,

and I say, “Here, eat your sandwich,”

and she starts in on it, the good

grilled cheese sandwich of this world.

 

 

* * *

SOME BRING TEARS

 

We’re always sending links around.

I’m starting to feel a little swamped

with links, videos that some friend liked,

editorials, and inspirational materials

of all kinds.  I’m not complaining, but

you know what I mean, too much, as we say,

information—and that’s not even counting

the news.  The news—the goddamn horrible

news.  However, I was grateful today to Tony,

same age as me, who sent a link

to a video called “Lost in the Sixties.”

Just a montage, with appropriate background music,

about 5 minutes.  And as it flowed along,

I found that I recognized every image

instantly.  JFK.  Vaughn Meader.

Chubby Checker. “Candid Camera.”

Muhammed Ali.  Howard Cossell. 

“The Twilight Zone.”  “Psycho.”

Walter Cronkite.  Betty Friedan. 

James Bond.  The moon landing.

The Beatles.  The Stones. 

The Monkees.  Tiny Tim. 

An ad for razors, set to “The Stripper.”

“Twister.”  Big, flashy cars and VW buses. 

Martin Luther King.  LBJ.  Riots.

Jim Morrison.  Jimi Hendrix. 

Malcolm X.  Vietnam.

Sam Cooke singing

his great song

“A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Did it come?  I guess it did,

and I guess it didn’t.  A lot of changes.

Me sitting here at my computer,

and I have clicked on a link.

That’s something new.

I don’t mean to suggest

that the Sixties were so special.

Everyone has their own version

of this experience, I guess—a wash

of images from the past,

with appropriate music

to go along with them.

And some bring tears.

* * *

WALKING IN THE CEMETERY

 

In this town, we have the nicest cemetery.

It was a burying place long before

it became this cemetery—its steep hills

are Native American burial mounds.

And then in the 19^th century,

when the cemetery was laid out,

lanes were looped among the hills,

and up and down the slopes, so it has

a graceful rounded look and feel.

And it’s been here long enough

to have big old trees—very different

from those flat, treeless cemeteries you sometimes see

stretching out into eternity. Curves and contours,

with much shade in summer, much color in fall,

and in winter, the trees are the night roosts

of crows, hundreds of them, and it’s quite a thing

to see, to hear, as they come coasting in

out of the blazing orange and pink

sunset to the west of town

in the cold, dusky afternoon, and settle onto the trees.

 

The gravestones are many different styles,

shapes, and ages, some with the writing

barely legible from standing so long

in rain and sun and snow.

Some are personalized, like Robert B. Hole’s,

which says, “I told you I was sick.”

Most are more conventional, minimalist,

with just names and dates. Some illustrious names

here and there among the ordinary. 

Harriet Tubman is here—look for her

at the foot of a lone, tall, double-trunked spruce. 

In one alcove of a hillside, the Seward family—

William, Lincoln’s indispensable man,

Secretary of State throughout the Civil War,

and his wife Francis, who hated political life

but kept her husband’s abolitionist spirit sharp.

And their son Fred, who met John Wilkes Booth’s accomplice

at the door, and was nearly killed himself,

bludgeoned with a pistol as he tried to protect his father.

Also Augustus and Fanny, both slashed

with the fleeing would-be assassin’s knife.

That was a long time ago, and all the drama,

terror, and suffering of it

has been in the earth for many years.

 

But today, my friend Vic and I are walking around

for an hour or so, as we often do,

the cemetery a good place for a stroll, and as we walk

we catch up on how things are going.

It’s August, warm enough to break a sweat.

And as we come along one of the back lanes,

not far from the Seward family,

we see a car parked up ahead, a black sedan.

That’s a little strange, not a place you’d expect

to see a car parked, and no one is standing nearby

visiting a grave.  Coming closer, we can tell

that the engine is running, and as we come up

beside the car, I glance in through the windows,

and what I see is, skin, lots of skin. 

Somebody’s naked in there, or pretty nearly—

there’s some partly removed clothing too—

and it is not one person, but two, intertwined—

making, as we used to say, the beast with two backs,

though only one back is visible. 

There’s some writhing around,

and legs akimbo— to tell the truth

I can’t really describe very well

the position they’re in.  It goes by pretty quickly,

as we keep on walking, but it’s quite a surprise

to come along and find lovers having a naked good time

right there on the front seat of the car.  Luckily,

Vic and I have our wits about us—we don’t stop and tap

on the window, and ask if everything is all right.

With the air conditioning running, hopefully

they don’t hear us passing by. 

When we’re a little further on, we look at each other,

and I say, “Did you see that?”

and Vic smiles and says, “Yeah.” 

We are not voyeurs, of course, we kept right on moving,

but it felt like we’d been given a little treat.

Who knows what lively, interesting thing you might see

walking in a cemetery?  Later, I remember

that the first time I was ever with a naked girl

was in a car in a cemetery.

But not in broad daylight.  It was night.

But that’s another story.  Or, the same story.

All of it, in a way, you could say, the same story.

 

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