Vanguard - a poem or two - Selling Mom's house

 

Here's Mom's house on Gantt Drive in Huntingdon Valley PA for sale for 633,000. Dyou spose Google uses a photoshop like tool to get that smooth lawn nice and velvety.

Just woke up in middle of night with a horrific pain in my left foot. Squeeze and massage, squeeze and massage. 

Thought about what happened during the day. 

Vanguard stock.

Early in the day I spent, oh, about half an hour speaking with one "Louise King from Charlotte" asking her to put $200 of VG stock in my bank account per month.

It was not a big deal at all.

When I looked at my bank account, no stock had been put there.

I called up again, getting a Michael on the phone.

Michael told me that for the past three months Vanguard's transactions had NOT gone through.

Lousy customer service, said Scott, who was fuming.

This Michael SWORE the transaction would come through today, Wednesday.

...

My upstairs office is terribly messy. A few poems were set aside. My favorite:

AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER

(Actually the title is from Mary Pasorini, an old lady who like me had lived in Village Green Apartments. I took her little blue book and kept it for ages until it disappeared. Mom and I had talked about her and her pizelle maker for years.)

Read the obit about Chris. 78 years old.

AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER

I was fat then

with my lithium thighs

and double chin

put on my best 

fat clothes and drove over

to meet him in the lobby

of the mental health facility

where I counseled people

sicker than I.

Under my arm was a manila folder I'd

stolen from the agency

filled with dozens of my poems

   When the Hummingbird hums

    Neighbors

     Houses on the Corner

waiting for a poet famous in our town.

I nodded to the new janitor in the lobby

casual in a white longjohn shirt

and huge glasses revealing owl eyes

that bored through my head

Walked over to the window to see if

he was pulling in.

Seven a.m. he said was the only time

he could come

I'd met him once at a reading

a tenured professor at Bucks

I turned back to the only one

in the waiting room,

tall legs ensconced in jeans

I tapped my folder and opened it up

he grabbed it eagerly

my Homer, my Ovid

said he'd look them over

mail them back to me.

I watched him mount his truck in

the parking lot.

A poet famous in our town.

A real poet, not a wanna-be

I kept the envelope he sent 

me back - 

could barely read his writing

"Why?" he wrote, "do you always

write about your neighbors?"

There were stars and exclamation points

on the poems I typed on my old Apple computer

with the holes on the side

and a line I clearly made out that said

"Send me more."