So, as I previously mentioned in Part One, I was gonna submit these to an online lit mag that folded.
YOU WERE PART OF MY WORLD
Oh, George, my silent tears fall for you
We both were walkers on Cowbell Road
You were impressed when I told you
my dad was a Marine
You would attend their reunions
all over the country
With a laugh you'd say
Less and less of us every year
You and Elinor finally invited
me over for lunch
Big stone fireplace in the
living room, where you sat
and shouted across the
room. Marines do not
wear hearing aids.
The tuna fish on toast
was good but best was
the house tour. Photos from
your trips around the world
an African safari sans Francis
McComber from Hemingway.
You would take the dining car
from Jenkintown to New York
where you worked in a fancy
office with a secretary
The dining car now gone
Elinor now gone
Your athletic walks gone
though you did them "in the
old ladies home" as you
called it
George, you fought in the
Pacific and told me you
were that rare bird -
an atheist in a fox hole -
but might I tell you a
secret?
You shall never be gone.
Never never never.
For you are my George on
the bottom of Cowbell Road
and I am the Belle in the middle
and you will always be the Beau.
I refuse to let you go.
So there! Many things live
then perish. You? Never.
***
I was going to eat my
afternoon salad - spinach
and cheddar cheese, golden
mushrooms and tiny green
scallions that crunch in
your mouth
And then I remembered!
They are waiting for me
on Facebook.
Iris and Fran, David and
Martha and the 300
Friends I have accrued
over the years
I must tell you I do not
"like" everyone. I do not want
to know the business of a
young mother whose
husband mistreats her
Leave the bastard, like I
left mine.
Does Facebook have
approval ratings as
the president does?
I am pressured - by
myself, I admit - to
find things "my friends" like.
No one cared when I
listed the winners of
the Pulitzer Prize, so
dash that!
They like photos of
what my boyfriend
gives me on holidays.
The Valentine's flowers
remain alive.
As we grow older and
weary, we need not
obey the demands
of Facebook.
I shall eat my salad,
then go outdoors in
the glorious sunshine,
smell the lilacs newly
blooming in the back yard
and marvel at the bumblebees
who know the exact moment
to exit their hives.
***
View Times story here.
Harriet Tubman will appear on the $20 bill, replacing slaveholder Andrew Jackson's visage.
WELCOME HARRIET TUBMAN
In ten long years, I shall
hold in my hand the newly
newly minted twenty-dollar bill
with your brave head gazing
upward.
Never-whipped-into submission
by Simon Legree,
you held your head high and
with the fierceness of a
tigress meandered through
woods and gullies,
guiding your people home.
Now looking down upon the
America you hardly know,
you must be pleased to
see the copper-skinned
people taking their
rightful places
at the table.
The long arc of
Justice has finally won.
***
He makes $4 per ton... is that what he said? The whole load - and the truck was full! - will pay him $20. He said he's retired and is a metalsmith, fashioning things out of metal and also of copper.
Watched the difficult Aussie film Felony.
While driving Scott to the train - I needed to go to the libe - I explained the film to him to better my mind.
Total mice caught under the kitchen counter - four.
Last nite I found a dead one in the trap and first thing today brought it into the trash, which was picked up this morning.
This is very difficult to do, but if Linda Myers across the street can do it, so can I.
I have one very odious task to do now.... sending a friend's work to a lit mag.... so I'll treat myself by munching on popcorn.
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