Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 24

Two poems from today

My Mother Tongue

like me, was born

in Mississippi

where a form of middle

English is spoken

if not taught.

The mud eaten by some,

but consumed by all

flows in the water

and our veins

flows in our words

you caint understain’

The dialect

I refuse to write

refuses to leave me

refuses to quiet

for every language

 is foreign

every poet

is deaf

so why not mine?

Why not me?

Now let us speak

of important things

love, death, and pizza

when the April wind

blows the blond mane

on the golden brown horse,

when the wild flowers

pink and purple and yellow

cover the roadsides.

Cold wind over the green,

green fields, down old Sage

and back up to the springs,

air too cold for swimming,

makes me hope

I live long enough

to get back to my love

and her warm pizza

coming out of the stove.

Fig Leaf

my father was

an honest and decent man

but not to be trusted

around figs

I watched him slowly strip

a fig tree of every

edible fig

more than once

trees that did not

belong to him

In a land of milk

and honey

and olive trees

he ate every fig.

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Brick

I carry a heavy red brick in the floor of the backseat of my car.

It isn’t bothering anyone, as no one rides in my backseat.

It is very old, and shaved smooth on one side.

It was a gift from a stranger and is marked with a name and the city “Bham”.

It is actually a cobblestone from the oldest street in Tallahassee.

The second oldest paved road in the state.

The brickyard was owned by a confederate general.

In all likelihood this brick was made by a free man,

But a man free in name only.

I keep it to honor that unknown black man,

But cannot display it,

For fear of honoring the general, too.

Mesostic

Two Poems about Salt

The Salt Keeper

I don’t use salt 

but keep three shakers,

and a big round box

with a cheap metal

pullout spout.

I don’t eat rice, anymore,

but I keep enough

to add to the shakers

now and then.

When they get low

I unscrew them

over the sink

so salt trapped

in the lid

doesn’t spill on

the counter and the floor.

Two stay in the kitchen

for cooking

and one on the table,

though sometimes a shaker

disappears into a bedroom

or onto an end table

in the living room.

When I notice,

I retrieve them

keeping them

topped off and ready.

More on Salt

My child keeps sea salt rocks

in a grinder,

though I try to explain,

all salt is sea salt,

but she knows too much to listen.

We have small round paper shakers

bought on the road

at places called Little Giant,

Giant Eagle, Ingles,

rarely at Delchamps or Kroger

or Walmart or Publix.

Pure white crystals,

not the lovely muddy concoctions

like curry or garam masala,

savored the world over

yet not on my palate

for nearly a decade

and rarely missed.

Every Time I Think I’m Going to Leave Denver

I think of the mountains to the west

Yes, Denver is the “mile high city”

But the mountains nearby

stick up another two miles,

and to the east lies hundreds

of miles of rolling

green treeless plains.

If I could make it

to California

or even back to Chicago

it might be worth it.

If I could go to Florida,

On some windswept beach,

Or cold clear blue spring

or some big city down

on the Ohio

like Cincinnati

or even Pittsburgh.

Cities with hundreds

of bridges and staircases,

cities with good food,

better people

and beer older than Colorado.

So I sit here,

Drinking overpriced beer

Surrounded by hipsters

Who know nothing

of work and steel mills

and dream of leaving,

but I comb my hair

up into a ponytail

and know I am here.

What Size Shoe

He asked, and I had 

to think about weight

At three twelve 

I needed twelve wides

but I had lost down

to two-fifty

and eleven and 

a half Ds would do

But I remembered a 

question my wife

sometimes asks

of blouses and skirts

“Do your shoes

run small?” I asked.

Not even sure how

one would know,

but tight shoes are

a big no-no —

Diabetes, and all

so I asked about socks,

visualizing socks who

could not process sugar

and thinking of the running 

of the shoes to a size, 

and how I don’t try for 

clever words: the ones

with back doors, tunnels,

overpasses and shortcuts.

I use standard English 

that plods along without 

Imagination. All the while

there are words running 

circles around it.

It ignores them like

a cow whisked at gnats 

and keeps grazing.

Funny the horses wear shoes

but cows are always

barefoot in the grass.

Now I wonder

do they shoe oxen

pulling carts on

cobblestones roads?

And if so,

do they run small?

Safe at Home

An ambulance and a police man

and the homeless man

stranded like a rental scooter

in the bushes

I don’t know if he’s dead

or dying as I go by

at 40 miles an hour

on this Boulevard passing

the fanciest bus station

in all of Tallahassee

Makes me think a bit

of my Mississippi family tradition

uncles 60 years apart

found in the flower bushes

outside a union hall

hard to say what killed them

mostly alcohol, i suppose.

That and a discussion

by a panel of poets

about writing in English

born with a foreign tongue

makes me think of the words

that came to Mississippi

from God knows where

mostly died in the bushes

corn fields,

cotton rows,

along the banks of

coldwater creeks

in the middle of the night.

I suppose the ambulance

driver and the policeman

will make it home safe tonight

and the homeless man

has no home whether

he makes it safe tonight or not

and uncles dead all those years ago

and me not yet

 just remembering

In This Ditch

Lies an ox

gored or not

I cannot say

for knee deep

in my rubber boots,

I would prefer to not

lie in this ditch, too

In a ditch like this

I used to find tadpoles

and in another

very large ditch

called Jeanatta

I would play

and look for snakes

and frogs and try

to not get hurt

And when I tired

the door would be locked

and we peed in the bushes

and we ate cold fish

sandwiches in the shade

of what I remember as elms

but could have been

something else completely.

19

If you follow US 19,

 in parts of Florida,

especially my part of Florida,

it lives of confused and missed directed life.

It rides along with US 98

coming up towards Perry, Florida

from the south and east,

even though 98 is supposed

to be east and west

and 19 supposed to be

north and south,

they are the same road

from some point

until they reach Perry,

 and in Perry,

there is US 27 waiting quietly

in front of the old red brick church

on the corner.

US 27 is also north and south,

but for a fair piece

from Gainesville to Perry,

it goes more east and west

of the north and south

but at a certain intersection

in Perry, Florida,

there’s a crazy handoff

and 98 continues west

where 27 looks like it was going.

27 takes a 90° turn and 19 continues

the direction it and 98 were going

before it stops at the red light

so now 19 and 27 go north

but still west towards Tallahassee

then 98 goes down to Apalachicola, Florida,

which is kind of a mystical, a mythical place,

until you go there and see

all the unemployed oysterman

and all their redneck hate flags

you despise them and feel sorry for them

all at once

and you know they love the bay

as much as anybody who

ever ate an oyster

and there’s nothing

you can do about it

because it’s Atlanta‘s fault

and there’s not really anything

Atlanta can do about it.

They have to have a drink,

but the odd thing is

if you come across the bridge

on 98 which is also US 319

at that point

and right at the bottom

of the bridge that you go

into Apalachicola

is a sign that says End of US 319

but 98 continues to Panama City

and Pensacola

and New Orleans

and probably to California

but I’ve never been there,

But this is the story

about Highway 19,

somewhere out in the wilderness

of Jefferson County,

somewhere between

the reasonable town of Perry

and the beautiful tree city Tallahassee,

for no apparent reason,

my 27 continues west

until it turns on its own

hard 90° turn to go north

towards Havana in front

of the state capital building,

but here are trees a couple of burned out

gas stations that haven’t

pumped gas

in my lifetime,

here, 19 turns and rides

a little two-lane road to some point up north,

some point I could figure out

if I looked at it on a map.

I know it goes to Monticello,

and that’s Monticello

without an ‘H’ sound,

he goes north out of Monticello

on to Georgia and God knows where

but it really ends in Monticello for me

and nobody that I can imagine

gets up in the morning

in Monticello and says,

“I think I’ll drive 19

and go down and see

some bombed out gas stations

along US 27”,

but that’s what 19 does.