Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 7

It Is Early Morning, Late August

The summer heat has not yet risen

and my mind stands in the cold December air

as the wind cuts against my face,

my .22 leaned on my shoulder

and I listen for the hated call of the crow

who eats my father’s pecans.

If I can I will kill it,

but as always I miss and it flies

and calls at in jest at my poor aim.

My fingers are cold as I reload

the single shot and his call echoes

in my ears I can taste the pecan pie

 my mother would make,

if the crows and squirrels

don’t eat them all first.

It is cold and I am alone

with my rifle.

Paris Basement

Sometimes I think I want to move to Paris

and spend my days and evenings

in a basement café

sipping coffee and eating slightly stale chocolat croissants

listening to jazz and not understanding

nor a single word of French.

Then I think about sitting in a redneck bar and grill

on some forgotten river a few miles in from

the Gulf of Mexico eating crawfish and softshell sandwiches

listening to Jimmy Buffet and George Jones on the jukebox

until the local boys take the stage and play covers

of Jimmy and George on the guitar and piano.

Or maybe I could move to Houston

where every walk up, drive-thru, and sit down

serve tacos, chimichangas, and burritos

so good you wanna cry.

But there is the New Orleans

And a two hundred year old apartment in the Quarter

where I would wake to coffee and a warm bag of white powdered beignets

and have shrimp po boys for lunch and sup on seafood gumbo

but then, I realize I really want to be in our oak canopied little place in Tallahsssee,

drinking my own coffee and eating the amazing food

my wife and I make, and I know I could live here until I die,

and probably will

Sometimes on a Summer Afternoon with my Dog

We go to a nearby park and sit on the grass

And watch young men from Africa

and Central America play soccer

kicking with skill I can only dream of

these are lawn workers and kitchen staff

with so much passion and energy

after a day’s work or before

a grueling nightshift, they run

back and forth on the green grass

never minding the heat

sometimes the ball comes my way

and I stand and toe kick it

they laugh, and I laugh because

the ball rolls helplessly about fifteen feet

After a while me and the dog

stand and stretch and wave goodbye

and I am happy to know these

wonderful people are part of my world.

White blue smoke

The way the white blue smoke 

goes straight up against 

the dark green pine

on this windless July day 

makes me remember a day 

in 1970 going to my girlfriends 

daddy’s place and her brother Chet

Tending to brushfires 

and we ate some kind of cookout 

when I think of cookouts, 

I don’t think you what

we ate that night 

I think of brother Rudolph barbecued hamburgers 

and my uncle James, 

some kind of sausage that came in

a can standing out back of his house 

in Heidelberg Mississippi 

A rich man, a banker, standing behind 

some old dairy farm’s farmhouse 

with concrete steps, and a grill nearby 

In a slightly dirty white apron 

carefully turned them on the grill

to this day I don’t think 

I’ve ever eaten better grilled sausage

 I wish I could remember 

the name written on that can.

The Girl in the Red Bathing Cap

The Girl in the Red Bathing Cap

and the matching red one piece

runs down the board and arches

into a perfect dive,

over and over on the neon sign

between the hotel and the restaurant.

Dad eats a half fried chicken,

Mama has a BLT and my brother

and I eat fancy hamburgers.

We can afford it because Daddy

is on a work trip making lots of money

life is good, even though hard times

are always only a couple of weeks away.

When life is good we forget the hard times,

the baked potatoes three nights per week

where Mama makes fried chicken

and only Daddy gets a piece of two

each night to keep his strength up

for his next job and we all crowd

into the bench of the old Dodge pickup

and ride 400 miles or so to where the work is now.

Today the hard times are a long ways away,

and I admire the arch while my older brother

admires the one piece,

and the hamburgers are good.

Another Hand

The old poet, too sick to paint,

too tired to garden,

sits in his wing back and plays solitaire

until another poem strikes him,

then tap, tap, tap,

and soon it passes

so he plays spades online,

as he tires of the solitaire.

He thinks to himself,

I am not really that old,

I thought I would be much older

before I became so feeble,

but his body answers without a doubt,

“you are old, old man.”

He sighs and deals out another hand,

grateful that sometimes,

at least, the little man

with the typewriter still gives

him a poem or two.

Somehow, and Not Often

But this morning’s coffee reminds

me of the smell of tannic acid,

the smell that permeated

so much of my childhood,

but nowhere more than the little cottage

outback of the Dan’s place in West Helena,

under the shade of great pecans.

My father worked daylight til dark

grafting wild pecans to Stuarts and other varieties,

and often the kerosene stove

was his evening work space,

dipping ends of scion wood in paraffin wax.

His sweat, in those days,

always smelled like dried pecan leaves.

I loved that smell, mostly because

it smelled like my daddy, so this morning,

in the predawn dark of my Tallahassee living room,

I travel to the kitchen of that tiny cabin

between the Mississippi and the White Rivers,

where mama cooked tacos and Sunday roast beef

and daddy cooked the wax

and the whole cottage smelled

of pecan leaves and kerosene.

Under the Reign of Acorns

Sometimes I am nostalgic

for the old screen porch

with its uneven linoleum floor,

us all sitting around a folding card table

smoking and drinking and playing cards.

The old man drinking vodka,

the rest of us on beers.

Seems like every night we paid

for his vodka and more,

no matter how much he drank

he won more than he lost.

And now I remember the way

the oaks in the backyard would rain down

acorns on the tin roof and realize

I gained so much but it is all lost to me now.

Chariot of Fire

One day soon, sooner than I would like,

 I’ll be going to my mansion in the sky,

I’ll be riding in a chariot of fire,

pulled by six black horses, red-eyed and snorting,

sometimes I like to pour water on the gasoline,

just to spread it around.

Last night I dreamed

I packed all my earthly belongings

in the trunk and headed up St Peter’s way,

when we pulled outside the gates

(I was disappointed to see heaven was just another gated community)

but Peter sees me pulling out the trunk

and says I cant bring my earthly treasures here.

I guess if you get a new robe and a mansion,

you cant complain,

but there are a handful of items

I’d really like to take, tchotchkes really,

but they mean a lot.

I asked if I could stay somewhere else and keep my stuff.

He said I could stay at the house of limbo for a while,

but I dont think I can get under the bar.

Even in Florida

A cold winter wind blows,

testing the insulation of old houses,

filling crawl spaces with Arctic blasts,

and on this hot day among many hot days

in the middle of July, well before dawn

a summer storm starts up

with a breeze wrapping around the corners

of our little house under the oaks

and sounds so much like a winter wind

I wrap my legs in a blanket

and am cold in my mind.