Our love is like a pair of ancient lizards, sleeping in the noonday sun
Against the heat of desert furnace, we live and catch our winged prey
As other loves perish from thirst for want of rainy fountain
Our love survives the lack of water through cold-blooded design.
Against the rocks and rough and tumble of the passing of our lives
We slither slickety along the rocky sands
For you alone are my desert love, showing your pink tongue to the curulean sky
And I am your reptilian beau, surviving the beating of afternoon suns
To rule in tandem the sands upon which we skitter
Sharing the flies and fleas we find, in loving union, as holy communal banquet.
I wrote this for a contest at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern. I hope I win.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Cindy's birthday
Today is Cindy's birthday. It is also the fourth anniversary of the landfall of Katrina on New Orleans. I think to a certain extent that Cindy still associates her birthday with the tragedy that occurred on that date. It was traumatic and continues to be something which is a running sore on this country.
Unfortunately, the whole experience illustrates the differences between the haves and the have-nots in life. The parts of New Orleans which were relatively wealthy recovered relatively quickly and are mostly back to where they were before the hurricane. But the poor parts of New Orleans still suffer from the damage that occurred on August 29, 2005.
Last year, Cindy and I went to Louisiana to visit her family. One morning we drove into town from the communities north of Lake Ponchatrain and came in to the city so that you could see the houses that still suffer from the damage. It was beyond the normal state of poor areas in this country, because you could still see houses which had been abandoned and houses which were being used, but were still suffering from the hurricane damage. East New Orleans was even worse, because it seemed as if it had been leveled and left to rot. Only the Home Depot seemed like something was going on.
The French Quarter and the Garden District were different. The Vieux Carre was hopping like it always does. It was quite resilient, although it was established on the high ground anyway. The Garden District, to the west of the French Quarter was still doing well.
Before I even had visited New Orleans, I always loved the place. When I was finally able to visit, it was better than I imagined. Those few days in January 1983 with Cindy were magical. We walked around the French Quarter and ate seafood in Metarie. It seemed like a completely different country in many ways.
Whenever I have been privy to a conversation about New Orleans with people from New Orleans, they often talk about the problems of New Orleans: the crime, the poverty, the downward spiral of the condition of the French Quarter and other parts of the city, I must admit that I see that and understand their feelings. But I also see a city which holds an exotic place in American culture. It is a third world country in miniature. Visiting New Orleans is like stepping into another culture. The bad is counterbalanced by the food and the tradition and the music and the idiocyncracies of New Orleans.
Of course, a lot of my love for the city is tied to my love for my wife. In some ways, she is the feminine spirit of New Orleans for me. I can not see New Orleans, the city, without thinking about the fun times Cindy and I have spent in the city, in the country surrounding the city and even the exotic nature that Cindy sometimes shows. I love that brown-eyed girl like I love her city.
Happy Birthday, dear wife.
Unfortunately, the whole experience illustrates the differences between the haves and the have-nots in life. The parts of New Orleans which were relatively wealthy recovered relatively quickly and are mostly back to where they were before the hurricane. But the poor parts of New Orleans still suffer from the damage that occurred on August 29, 2005.
Last year, Cindy and I went to Louisiana to visit her family. One morning we drove into town from the communities north of Lake Ponchatrain and came in to the city so that you could see the houses that still suffer from the damage. It was beyond the normal state of poor areas in this country, because you could still see houses which had been abandoned and houses which were being used, but were still suffering from the hurricane damage. East New Orleans was even worse, because it seemed as if it had been leveled and left to rot. Only the Home Depot seemed like something was going on.
The French Quarter and the Garden District were different. The Vieux Carre was hopping like it always does. It was quite resilient, although it was established on the high ground anyway. The Garden District, to the west of the French Quarter was still doing well.
Before I even had visited New Orleans, I always loved the place. When I was finally able to visit, it was better than I imagined. Those few days in January 1983 with Cindy were magical. We walked around the French Quarter and ate seafood in Metarie. It seemed like a completely different country in many ways.
Whenever I have been privy to a conversation about New Orleans with people from New Orleans, they often talk about the problems of New Orleans: the crime, the poverty, the downward spiral of the condition of the French Quarter and other parts of the city, I must admit that I see that and understand their feelings. But I also see a city which holds an exotic place in American culture. It is a third world country in miniature. Visiting New Orleans is like stepping into another culture. The bad is counterbalanced by the food and the tradition and the music and the idiocyncracies of New Orleans.
Of course, a lot of my love for the city is tied to my love for my wife. In some ways, she is the feminine spirit of New Orleans for me. I can not see New Orleans, the city, without thinking about the fun times Cindy and I have spent in the city, in the country surrounding the city and even the exotic nature that Cindy sometimes shows. I love that brown-eyed girl like I love her city.
Happy Birthday, dear wife.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The future today
Most days I hide in an old Victorian house on South Hill Street and see myself as some greying country lawyer, plying his trade, waiting for another call on the telephone. This is fiction since I sit in front of a computer screen all day and refrain from dictating my pleas and briefs to my secretary, who would not know how to take dictation, even if we wanted to give and take that way. The law changes everyday, like the evolution of germs and bacteria on a petri dish. But sitting in my cotton, button-down shirt, I can at least play the scene like Atticus Finch, in some North Alabama courtroom.
Today, however, I received quite a push into the 21st century. After meeting with three elderly black ladies to talk estates and probate and the leavings of memory, I was sitting in my office, reading a book about Andrew Jackson, when my phone rang. It was a lady in Pennsylvania, who calls me from time to time to solicit my aid in closing loans out on the country roads of West Middle Georgia.
And today was different. This time, my contact person wanted to know if I was prepared to close an e-loan, a loan without paper and pen. What this request entailed was bringing the closing procedure out of the piles and files of paper and bringing it forward to what is considered the future, which is loan closing on line on a computer, without printing out the paper or dealing with the words printed on a piece of paper.
So for two hours, I made myself available to the electronic box on my credenza, trying to educate myself and make my self a part of the electronic future of closing. At this point, I am prepared to drive to a small hamlet north of Columbus, and a little house, in which, on Monday morning around 8:00 o'clock a.m., I will join with two other citizens in the rising morning and we will enter the future. Or at least today.
Today, however, I received quite a push into the 21st century. After meeting with three elderly black ladies to talk estates and probate and the leavings of memory, I was sitting in my office, reading a book about Andrew Jackson, when my phone rang. It was a lady in Pennsylvania, who calls me from time to time to solicit my aid in closing loans out on the country roads of West Middle Georgia.
And today was different. This time, my contact person wanted to know if I was prepared to close an e-loan, a loan without paper and pen. What this request entailed was bringing the closing procedure out of the piles and files of paper and bringing it forward to what is considered the future, which is loan closing on line on a computer, without printing out the paper or dealing with the words printed on a piece of paper.
So for two hours, I made myself available to the electronic box on my credenza, trying to educate myself and make my self a part of the electronic future of closing. At this point, I am prepared to drive to a small hamlet north of Columbus, and a little house, in which, on Monday morning around 8:00 o'clock a.m., I will join with two other citizens in the rising morning and we will enter the future. Or at least today.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wood and linens
The smell of last week's breeze still lies heavy on the sheets
From hanging on the line in the back yard
And the scent of furniture polish is thick perfume
In the old middle bedroom upstairs.
Far in time and distance, I lie separated
From the place that was, that brought me such comfort
But I am there, in my memory, feeling the clean scratch
Of those sheets on my legs and across my chest.
Morning will come soon with the climbing of the sun into the sky
And the past will tuck smartly in some cubbyhole in my mind,
While I press diligently towards tomorrow
To conquer the day at hand, relying on the unseen support
From the days that lie comfortably behind me.
Yet, what is more real: the living of the day
In which I now exist and breathe and stumble towards the next
Or the caress of those sheets on that well-oiled middle bed,
Still scratching my skin and rising fragrantly up through my nostrils?
From hanging on the line in the back yard
And the scent of furniture polish is thick perfume
In the old middle bedroom upstairs.
Far in time and distance, I lie separated
From the place that was, that brought me such comfort
But I am there, in my memory, feeling the clean scratch
Of those sheets on my legs and across my chest.
Morning will come soon with the climbing of the sun into the sky
And the past will tuck smartly in some cubbyhole in my mind,
While I press diligently towards tomorrow
To conquer the day at hand, relying on the unseen support
From the days that lie comfortably behind me.
Yet, what is more real: the living of the day
In which I now exist and breathe and stumble towards the next
Or the caress of those sheets on that well-oiled middle bed,
Still scratching my skin and rising fragrantly up through my nostrils?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Autumn
I remember this time of year, when the harsh heat of August was melting into September and the beginning of Fall. When I was younger, I travelled to the farm in Tennessee and visited my grandmother. The International Walking Horse Show was being held in Shelbyville. Austin Peay might be playing football on Saturday night. Dad and I would patiently walk the fencerows on Saturday afternoon in search of a mourning dove or two. It would be warm and you could feel the coming of Autumn only at night or in the early morning when I would get up and join grandmommie in the kitchen for breakfast. Later in the season, the leaves on the oaks and maples in the front yard would turn red and yellow, then brown before they fell as a blanket on the ground. Even later, the air would get colder and the smell of burning coal would fall upon the scene and lay a thick sweetness on the ground. At Thanksgiving, we would eat turkey and ham and grandmommie's dressing with sweet gherkins and watermelon pickles and olives and green beans and sweet potatoes, followed by those special little buttery biscuits that my grandmother always apologized for, then offered us two, because they were so wonderfully small. Autumn would end as Christmas rolled around and all of the birthdays would come and go and the world would turn grey and the air around the farm would be cold and bitter, but inside the house, it would be warm and filled with the smell of cinnamon candy, citrusy ambrosia, boiled custard and chocolate caramels and divinity. The sweet ending of the year.
Oranges
Butter orange poppies spread across a California canyon in Spring
Or the orange of the western sky at end of Summer,
Reflecting off a stark butte in Wyoming ,
Is different from the orange of the leaves
Burning flames through a sugar maple in October,
Which is different from the orange in your sock
At the crack of dawn on Christmas morn,
Which gives sweetness dripping sunshine
To a dark, cold world at the dying of December.
Or the orange of the western sky at end of Summer,
Reflecting off a stark butte in Wyoming ,
Is different from the orange of the leaves
Burning flames through a sugar maple in October,
Which is different from the orange in your sock
At the crack of dawn on Christmas morn,
Which gives sweetness dripping sunshine
To a dark, cold world at the dying of December.
Summer vegetables and lined fields in Autumn
I am so glad I don't have to ride back and forth between Griffin and Atlanta every day. Boy, am I tired at this point. I have to assume that my tired state could only be caused by the driving I did during the middle of the day. As I get older, my ability to withstand regular travel hither and yon is reduced. Just a product of the passage of time, but there nonetheless.
I still have a closing this afternoon at six and need to go to church afterward. Cindy will keep a plate warm for me, I know. I am happy to get back into the normal rhythm of life with Wednesday night church and such.
There you go. Why can't I remember how to spell rhythm? There always seem to be certain words the spelling of which remain beyond me. Rhythm is one of them.
I ate lunch at Mary Mac's with a new friend, Brad Howell. Brad is the husband of a former high school classmate of mine at Dunwoody. He hails from Thomson, Georgia, the home of Tom Watson, one of my favorite characters in Georgia history and politics. Watson's statue stands prominently in front of the front stairs into the capital in Atlanta and I stopped by his home in Thomson one time this year when I was coming back from a hearing in Columbia County. Since we are both from small towns, Thomson and Hopkinsville, I thought it appropriate to eat at a place where we could get 'country cooking.' So, I had chicken, rice and gravy with butter beans and cabbage and Brad ate barbecue and brunswick stew. We both washed our meals down with the state wine of Georgia: Sweet Tea.
Cindy said that it was perfect for me, taking something healthy like chicken and frying it and pouring gravy over it all. Well la-di-da. It tasted good and I think the cabbage and butter beans speak for themselves. I will say that it is now after five o'clock and I still can feel my lunch in my belly. So you can also say that it lasted me for a significant time. At least to supper.
I got into the habit of eating a meat and three when I was in law school in Athens. A bunch of my friends and I used to walk across Broad Street to Helen's restaurant and eat lunch most every day. At least that way I knew I was getting something that was intended to be healthy and full of all the vitamins, minerals, protein and carbohydrates. And sweet tea, always sweet tea.
I know this, I lost a ton of weight in my first year of law school. All that weight I put on for football dripped off when I wasn't eating to make sure I didn't fly backwards when I encountered an offensive tackle on the football field.
Which reminds me: it is upon us. When I go to pick Cindy up at Griffin Tech in the afternoon we pass the football field for a Christian high school and three fields of football players stretching out before practice for the recreational league. There are a lot of times in which I wish I was out there just like them. Smelling the grass, feeling the dizzyness after the first pop of headgear. The sour taste of the chalk from the lines on the football field. The burn of the bruises on my shoulders and forearms. The glory of putting some quarterback on his butt. Hunnh!
Ah, fall is upon us. Glory, glory, glory. The cool breezes and bright colors of dying leaves. Is there anything better?
I still have a closing this afternoon at six and need to go to church afterward. Cindy will keep a plate warm for me, I know. I am happy to get back into the normal rhythm of life with Wednesday night church and such.
There you go. Why can't I remember how to spell rhythm? There always seem to be certain words the spelling of which remain beyond me. Rhythm is one of them.
I ate lunch at Mary Mac's with a new friend, Brad Howell. Brad is the husband of a former high school classmate of mine at Dunwoody. He hails from Thomson, Georgia, the home of Tom Watson, one of my favorite characters in Georgia history and politics. Watson's statue stands prominently in front of the front stairs into the capital in Atlanta and I stopped by his home in Thomson one time this year when I was coming back from a hearing in Columbia County. Since we are both from small towns, Thomson and Hopkinsville, I thought it appropriate to eat at a place where we could get 'country cooking.' So, I had chicken, rice and gravy with butter beans and cabbage and Brad ate barbecue and brunswick stew. We both washed our meals down with the state wine of Georgia: Sweet Tea.
Cindy said that it was perfect for me, taking something healthy like chicken and frying it and pouring gravy over it all. Well la-di-da. It tasted good and I think the cabbage and butter beans speak for themselves. I will say that it is now after five o'clock and I still can feel my lunch in my belly. So you can also say that it lasted me for a significant time. At least to supper.
I got into the habit of eating a meat and three when I was in law school in Athens. A bunch of my friends and I used to walk across Broad Street to Helen's restaurant and eat lunch most every day. At least that way I knew I was getting something that was intended to be healthy and full of all the vitamins, minerals, protein and carbohydrates. And sweet tea, always sweet tea.
I know this, I lost a ton of weight in my first year of law school. All that weight I put on for football dripped off when I wasn't eating to make sure I didn't fly backwards when I encountered an offensive tackle on the football field.
Which reminds me: it is upon us. When I go to pick Cindy up at Griffin Tech in the afternoon we pass the football field for a Christian high school and three fields of football players stretching out before practice for the recreational league. There are a lot of times in which I wish I was out there just like them. Smelling the grass, feeling the dizzyness after the first pop of headgear. The sour taste of the chalk from the lines on the football field. The burn of the bruises on my shoulders and forearms. The glory of putting some quarterback on his butt. Hunnh!
Ah, fall is upon us. Glory, glory, glory. The cool breezes and bright colors of dying leaves. Is there anything better?
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