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Heron Clan Reading: May 2, 2021
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Heron Clan Readings Sunday Zoom Sunday Afternoon Poetry Reading Selections
My Mother's Hometown
My Mother
Had a hometown
She often spoke about,
Cable cars and inclined trains
And floods along the river,
A dog in the park,
An airport you fly up to,
And Presbyterian churches and well to do houses,
A fear of abandonment,
If doctrines weren’t followed.
They will throw us out.
Well be living on the street,
If you don’t behave, now
Don’t speak at the table,
Until you are asked.
A four year old child
Sitting crossed ankled
and sullen.
Grandpa would ask,
Once,
Tell me how was your day,
Speak clearly and quickly,
Don’t ask to get down.
The town was hard working
With a steel mill and such,
All down below the hills
At the end of the mountain.
She tried to fit in, this premature child,
Born full term, a month early,
So her mother said.
Her father a dandy from an immigrant crowd,
Not part of her life never fully around.
She left as soon as she properly could.
Married to a dentist army bound.
Get out, get away,
From the shame and the failings,
To find 100 years later
A shame closely shared
The grandfather who kept order
Of a household with 6 children
Was doing his best to
Hide a secret of his own.
A baby boy born without a father
in the late 19th century,
An unwed mother
No one spoke about.
My Mother had a hometown.
paper mill warrior
Leo worked in a papermill
outside of Portland.
The east coast one.
A protrait of the man
written by a man
that could have a portrait
written of him,
Someday.
But today he told us of
Leo
and rolls and rolls of paper
to the inside horizon.
Year and Years Days and Days
Driving down a road so many times
If it were dirt, instead of
Pavement,
the ruts would rub
the underside of the carriage of the car or wagon
(or buns of the warrior worker as he walked)
But he drove
So no one saw
the path worn through the years
On the asphalt.
There should be a path
After 30 years.
31 years to be closer to exact, that
I myself drove the pavement.
Not to paper, but to work
I thought a priveldge to do,
Until the words redundant
Non income producing
Position
They put me in became
well
redundant.
Filled easily by keepers,
of books,
Who pushed the numbers around
to look like incomes.
No more pavement worn job
No party cake
To say good bye
Just a road I don't go down
Anymore.
Grey Highlights on Wood
Sun dots the oak canals of
His skin.
The branches wander,
Speaking to their neighbor,
They are all up in the Elm’s height,
Who is busy reaching for the sky.
Hello the sun, pokes through,
Coloring the trunk in grey highlights,
The brown gone ashen with age,
With time,
A long time stood, with small
Flowering beings at its base
Sheltered from the
Hello sun.
Picking up light from the
Sideway rays of late
Afternoon in June,
His skin feels the
Newness fading to summer
As July stills the breezes to heat,
But now, new sun and the coolness of Spring,
Highlight the canals of his skin.
