Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 6

CountryIf I had red leather pointy-toed cowboy boots and ...

Country

If I had red leather pointy-toed cowboy boots

 and a solid gold archtop Harmony guitar

and propped my foot up on your coffee table

while I leaned back and strummed the guitar,

and if I sang with a country accent somewhere

between June Carter and Dwight Yoakam,

would you call me hillbilly, and would you listen anyway?

You don’t know me but you dont like me,

and I wonder how many times

you have walked the streets of Bakersfield? 

And no, I have never been to California,

and I traded in my Stetson for my trademark

slightly dirty khaki hat

but I hung around the tunnel in Aliquippa,

strumming and walking and somebody

even took a picture of me looking out

to the west in the rain for the cover of the album

nobody bought called This Town is Union Made.

But when I was fourteen, I went to Brownsville,

Mc Allen and Reynosa, where they fed me tacos and tamales

and I fell in love with every Mexican girl

on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Sketched out in the Dust

on an old blue dresser

in an abandoned farmhouse

somewhere in the Midwest,

maybe Iowa, I really don’t remember,

was the story of my life

only I didn’t know it then

as I hadn’t lived so long as to see it.

But there were mathematical formulas,

 haikus and bible verses,

and a picture of a fish

of some sort, meaning,

either Jesus or the White River or both.

Closeness

My big brother and I have always been close

My job was to find trouble, his to get us out.

I was the ox, he was the fixer.

If the Watkins boys were on the job

There was nearly nothing we couldn’t do

I could drive a truck ninety to a hundred hours

Per week, illegal yes, but nobody knew

He could run our family business singlehandedly.

We thought we were both gonna live into our eighties

Like our parents did, he has a bad heart,

and I am dying of cancer

For a long time we lived at opposite ends of Florida

But a couple years ago we moved about two hours apart

He has a little boat and we made plans, to meet at the lake

At the corner of Alabama, Florida and Georgia

And spend a day trying to catch some fish

We never got there, and now, it looks like we never will,

I thought we might sit on my porch and tell each other the tales

We both knew, from county hole to the red neck shuffle and on and on

But now I’m too weak to do anything

but sit in my chair in the closeness of my living room

He came to visit and sat close by on the couch

And we talked about the closeness of the end, for both of us

And I played him Jimmy’s Bubbles Up

And I cried, I couldn’t see if he did.

I told him I loved him, and he gave me hug

I know he wished he could get me out of this trouble

One more time.

So Many Places

So many creases, you don’t know

where the river bends, but I do,

I was born here a long time ago

on the banks I swatted mosquitoes

and cried from hunger when the sun went down.

I have seen the cotton mouths

and the cypress knees.

Follow me, we will get there

and have fish over an open fire for supper,

we will catch all the bream you would care for

before the shadows overtake the bank.

In the low sandy shallows

and on the nearby dry bed we will catch them

and grill them on a stick and you will swear

 you have never eaten better,

and I will know your words are true.

No Ship

There are enough bolts

and rivets to build the ship

and welders and riveters to spare

yet the ship rusts in the harbor

tethered and unfinished

and the sailors walk by

and move on to the bar

to drink for there is no sailing today,

only clouds and rain and rust

There are No Cactus Trees in New Mexico

Low growing pinons and purple astors

and rocks where the natives have  

a hundred names for shades of brown

And the people as varied

and creased and as brown as the rocks

Life short and long there

Babies die before they walk due to plague,

and rape and murder, where men

with crisp blue coats and gold buttons

bayonet them to save the bullets.

And yet the elders sit among the rocks

and remember and grieve the dead and the living

and the paint their doors the one shade of blue

 that reminds me of the sky.

Are these the doors to heaven

 or only to  blue corn enchiladas

and tamales?

And is there any difference

between them and heaven?

Green

the rain is over

the bluejay is screaming

Sunday morning

and a high of eighty.

The peppers recovered

from the drought need staking

the squash died before the rain

everything is green and cool

and life is beautiful.

Breakfast over and my son

is headed home again

I miss him already

but know his wife and babies

need him more.

Someday, maybe, I’ll go to Tampa

and see them all again

but today I’ll stay here

under the greenest oaks

think of painting and watch

the peppers grow.

If I Wore Shoes

And I do, mostly topsiders,

like the margaritavilles I have now,

but if I wore rubber gummy boots

or lo top sneakers or engineers boots?

I used to wear cowboy boots,

but never liked the narrow toes.

When I was young,

I ran through the woods all winter

barefoot in the frost,

today I cant run at all,

and surely wouldn’t do it

in the cold with no shoes.

But  if I wore soft sole hush puppies

and wore my khakis cut a little too long

so the creased over my instep

without  touching the ground,

and of course my button down

long sleeve blue shirt

and my slightly dirty  khaki hat,

would you know it was me,

humpty backed and slow moving?

Or if I was again barefoot in the woods,

long yellowing toe nails,

as old men’s toes do,

with a trusty shot gun for rabbits

and squirrels to keep myself fed

would you know it was the same old poet,

would you see me there?

Long Lines

Are good for deep sea trawlers and maybe Shakespeare

While I do love seafood and a couple of ole Bill’s plays

I prefer cane poles

And short lines

Of words on a page

And even though Faulkner

could write forty words

in a glorious sentence

and even though I never understood how deep sea fishing worked

give me a worn or a cricket

and six feet of bamboo

and I will be happy

catching bluegill

or crappy and such

with hush puppies

I believe I love them

More than Go Down Moses

or A Light in August

Though if he sees the sun setting through the pastor’s window,  the  pastor who may be the father of the illegitimate child, named Christmas, I sometimes think Faulkner was a better poet writing prose than either I or a mess of pan fish.

So save the long lines

for amusement parks.

The oil is hot,

the match lights at four

and we have hush puppies

The old dog lies in the sun

in the warm grass

of this overgrown courtyard.

He is the last, as am I,

the old lady died and I am

left as the keeper.

Not the owner.

Someone who has never been

to Venice owns the place,

but it is mine as long as I live.

He watches me, as he usually does.

He was born here, half basset,

half blue tick, his mother

the blue tick I brought from Kentucky

and the basset a  passing stranger.

His eyes are weak.

He has never left the garden,

except the once as a puppy

and the old lady, not so old then,

and quite alive, yelled and cursed

in Italian at me, at him

as he sniffed the boat dock

and I gathered him up and brought him

back to his forever green prison.

I sit on the rust pocked white painted iron chair,

writing another poem no one will ever read.

We will die here, someday, in this garden,

and the vines will overtake us.

I think of the Aspern Papers,

who knows what he thinks of.