I wrote the following two poems in 2011 during a brief "fling" with a Mennonite girl who couldn't bring herself to meet my fawning adoration with like affection. She was a poet and she inspired me to write a number of poems, but only these two stand out to me as being any good. After the Mennonite girl severed ties with me she moved back to rural Pennsylvania to be with her family. Good for her.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011- Officer's hands
On a family trip to
Plymouth,
we visited the Mayflower,
or a replica of the Mayflower.
I was eight years old and liked
to read books about seafaring,
books about cabin boys.
After the tour of the ship,
my dad and I were sitting
under a tree near Plymouth Rock,
looking at the vessel from a distance,
when one of the actors
dressed as a sailor walked over.
These actors wandered around town,
playing people from another time,
never breaking their characters.
“Do you like boats?” he asked me
in his gruffest sailor voice,
but I was shy and didn’t respond,
so my dad informed the “sailor”
of information recently confided,
“He’d like to climb the rigging,”
which is something I read about
not too long previous
in a book about a cabin boy.
The “sailor” glared at me sidelong
as if speculating before bellowing,
“Let me see yer hands!!!!!!!”
I held out one hand to him.
He grasped my wrist, turning
the appendage different angles,
scrutinizing the boyish skin
for several silent moments,
before releasing it dramatically.
“These are an officer’s hands!”
he said, almost in disgust,
“You have to have hands like this,”
holding out his own calloused palms
“if you want to climb the rigging
or you’d never make it to the top!”
In my subsequent childhood years,
I would re-imagine the encounter,
and what might have happened
if I had been really tough.
In this version my response would
have been to take out a knife!
and slice open the palm of my hand,
hold out the bloody gash to the “sailor”
and cry, “You call these an officer’s hands!”
This fantasy replayed in my thoughts
for far too long, until I grew out of it
by realizing the “sailor” was correct.
I have an officer’s hands and always have.
I work in an office, where my hands
are never soiled for very long
before I wash them in the restroom
before going back to type letters.
I’ve never been much of a manual laborer,
thinking it didn’t matter, because
that was the point of my going to college,
the upward mobility my parents sought for me,
to work in an office and keep my hands clean,
but now that I’m here it doesn’t feel right.
I don’t belong in either place it seems,
laboring in sweat covered days
or wearing a collared shirt and tie,
getting places by sending out résumés.
It seems that I have been deceived,
something that became apparent
not too long ago in a conversation
with two female friends as we walked
to a breakfast and they talked
about men they were dating lately.
The first one said she liked this new guy
who is a plumber and a carpenter
and the second made a noise of approval.
Not a word, just a noise, almost instinctual,
a soft moan from deep inside of her,
harkening and calling forth usefulness.
This was only two weeks ago,
yet that noise brought back to me
the fantasy of my bloody palm,
held out in defiance to the “sailor”
who said I would never make it
to the top of the rigging,
a prophecy that my upward mobility
would take place in an elevator
after pressing my spotless finger
against a button reading “4”
every morning, five days a week
without an end in sight.
These officer’s hands will never illicit
a soft noise of approval
from my kind of people,
the people I left behind
chasing a promise we were told
was certain to deliver us.
Deliver us where? I now ask
each night alone in bed
after setting my alarm
for another day at the office.
And now I sit at my desk
thinking about that day in Plymouth
when I was eight years old.
After we left the Mayflower,
we walked through a small park
and came upon a natural spring
right in the middle of town,
cold water bubbling from the ground.
I put my hand into the water
but no blood was washed away
because it is an officer’s hand.
we visited the Mayflower,
or a replica of the Mayflower.
I was eight years old and liked
to read books about seafaring,
books about cabin boys.
After the tour of the ship,
my dad and I were sitting
under a tree near Plymouth Rock,
looking at the vessel from a distance,
when one of the actors
dressed as a sailor walked over.
These actors wandered around town,
playing people from another time,
never breaking their characters.
“Do you like boats?” he asked me
in his gruffest sailor voice,
but I was shy and didn’t respond,
so my dad informed the “sailor”
of information recently confided,
“He’d like to climb the rigging,”
which is something I read about
not too long previous
in a book about a cabin boy.
The “sailor” glared at me sidelong
as if speculating before bellowing,
“Let me see yer hands!!!!!!!”
I held out one hand to him.
He grasped my wrist, turning
the appendage different angles,
scrutinizing the boyish skin
for several silent moments,
before releasing it dramatically.
“These are an officer’s hands!”
he said, almost in disgust,
“You have to have hands like this,”
holding out his own calloused palms
“if you want to climb the rigging
or you’d never make it to the top!”
In my subsequent childhood years,
I would re-imagine the encounter,
and what might have happened
if I had been really tough.
In this version my response would
have been to take out a knife!
and slice open the palm of my hand,
hold out the bloody gash to the “sailor”
and cry, “You call these an officer’s hands!”
This fantasy replayed in my thoughts
for far too long, until I grew out of it
by realizing the “sailor” was correct.
I have an officer’s hands and always have.
I work in an office, where my hands
are never soiled for very long
before I wash them in the restroom
before going back to type letters.
I’ve never been much of a manual laborer,
thinking it didn’t matter, because
that was the point of my going to college,
the upward mobility my parents sought for me,
to work in an office and keep my hands clean,
but now that I’m here it doesn’t feel right.
I don’t belong in either place it seems,
laboring in sweat covered days
or wearing a collared shirt and tie,
getting places by sending out résumés.
It seems that I have been deceived,
something that became apparent
not too long ago in a conversation
with two female friends as we walked
to a breakfast and they talked
about men they were dating lately.
The first one said she liked this new guy
who is a plumber and a carpenter
and the second made a noise of approval.
Not a word, just a noise, almost instinctual,
a soft moan from deep inside of her,
harkening and calling forth usefulness.
This was only two weeks ago,
yet that noise brought back to me
the fantasy of my bloody palm,
held out in defiance to the “sailor”
who said I would never make it
to the top of the rigging,
a prophecy that my upward mobility
would take place in an elevator
after pressing my spotless finger
against a button reading “4”
every morning, five days a week
without an end in sight.
These officer’s hands will never illicit
a soft noise of approval
from my kind of people,
the people I left behind
chasing a promise we were told
was certain to deliver us.
Deliver us where? I now ask
each night alone in bed
after setting my alarm
for another day at the office.
And now I sit at my desk
thinking about that day in Plymouth
when I was eight years old.
After we left the Mayflower,
we walked through a small park
and came upon a natural spring
right in the middle of town,
cold water bubbling from the ground.
I put my hand into the water
but no blood was washed away
because it is an officer’s hand.
Friday, November 4,
2011- Running Away
1.
Morning light would
always wake me early
when I was four years old.
In my footie pajamas
I sat in the front room
of our trailer in the country,
looking at the lawn grow bright
as the sun passed above the treetops.
Soon my mother would rise,
prepare for work and leave
after the arrival of Mrs. Harding
who watched my baby sister,
my brother and me.
My morning vigil
was a quiet time,
a secret time for me,
before the day began
with its activities,
mostly playing in the woods
with my little brother.
My father would leave
for work much earlier,
usually before dawn,
to drive the school bus.
Time on a clock ruled
the comings and goings
of my parents,
when they awoke and
when they left the house
and when they returned,
but my schedule was
determined by morning light.
Late in October the time changed,
the sun came up an hour earlier,
I woke up an hour earlier, unaware,
I went and sat in the chair
by the window, my usual place.
I saw a thing I had
never seen so early in the morning,
a car leaving the driveway.
My young mind
had never comprehended
this part of the day
when my father
left for work
long before my vigil.
Due to some confusion,
my dreamlike child’s perception,
I saw two heads in the front seats
of the departing vehicle,
both of my parents running away.
I went outside
waving my arms and yelling,
but the car turned onto the road.
I ran to the end of the driveway,
into the middle of the road,
saw red taillights disappearing
beyond the horizon of a distant hill.
Still I chased it, running in that direction
down the road, tears now streaming
from my eyes, as cold asphalt chilled
the soles of my pajama feet.
Soon I realized it was hopeless,
they were gone, but I kept running,
the cornfield stretching out to my left,
a patch of forest to my right and then
old Mrs. Bailey’s house which I passed,
continuing on past more trees to
the house of my parents’ friends,
the Wickstrom’s,
nestled back in the wood.
I pounded on the door
until Deena Wickstrom
opened it to see me
standing there in pajamas.
“My parents drove away,”
I told her,
“They’ve left me all alone.”
She looked confused.
We got in her car
and drove back.
Deena knocked on our trailer door,
there was no answer,
so she tried the knob.
We went inside and down the hall,
to my parents’ bedroom door
on which she softly knocked again.
Moments later my disheveled mother
fresh from sleep emerged
and Deena explained her presence.
My parents had not run away,
I wanted to be happy,
but I was still afraid.
2.
My favorite childhood movie
was about a girl named Natty
whose father crosses the country
for a job cutting trees
leaving her in the city.
She doesn’t stay there long,
catching a train west,
setting out on a journey,
perilous in nature,
she takes up with a wolf
who seems sworn
to protect her,
until she reaches her father.
This movie affected me.
I watched it repeatedly.
3.
At the age of five
I went to school,
no more mornings
playing pet dog
with my brother,
now it was letters and numbers
and standing in line,
it was waking up on time,
ruled by the clock.
I learned to read and write
and with my brother
a plan did I concoct.
The first letter I ever wrote
to my mother said:
“I’m sorry mommy,
we are running away
from home.”
I made two copies,
one to go under each of our pillows.
The plan was this: in the middle of night
I would rise before the dawn
and take my brother away,
I did not know where,
not to a father that had abandoned us,
but into the woods,
on a journey of adventure,
my brother running beside me,
he had played pet dog,
now he would play pet wolf.
The plan was perfect,
the notes were under our pillows
but in the morning I slept too late.
The sun was up
when I crumpled up my note,
put it in the trash,
and went to get my brother’s,
where I found my mother
making his bed,
no note in sight.
She must have found it,
but she never mentioned it,
and I never tried to run away again.
4.
My sister did,
maybe five years later.
She was another convert
to the gospel of Natty Gann,
the good news of the woods,
of escape and of freedom.
I don’t remember the circumstance,
only her deciding to pack her
small child-sized suitcase
and walk into the woods
behind our house.
Of course she left a note.
After a few hours of her gone,
or maybe only twenty minutes,
my brother and I went looking.
We found her
sitting on the ground
pretending the branches
of a fallen tree
were a shelter.
She looked bored.
My brother and I decided
to make her a better shelter
by dragging large branches,
arranging them together,
lined up and leaning against
the fallen tree,
making a space that
could be crawled into.
We left my sister there,
and a few hours later,
or maybe twenty minutes,
she came home
and unpacked her suitcase.
The structure we had built
remained for years to come.
5.
Our practice pets were bunnies,
really we wanted a dog,
but really we wanted a wolf!
But we got bunnies.
The first one, Wiggles,
lived in a pen outside
in the summertime.
We came home
from church one day
to find the pen
ravaged by a dog.
Wiggles was nowhere in sight.
Then we had Brownie,
who lived longer
but died prematurely
due to a giant tumor
on his chest.
Finally it was time to get a dog!
In the classifieds we found
a “pure-bred” Siberian Husky
(papers were not included)
for a hundred dollars,
paid for by my father.
We named him Rocky.
Rocky never lived to be fully grown,
the wolf in him made him
prone to wander,
and though we lived in the woods,
it wasn’t too far from a busy road.
We buried him in the yard
next to Brownie.
At last there was Heidi
the yellow lab with blonde hair
like everyone else in the family,
who lived until us kids moved out
and a few years after that too.
Rocky was the closest we came
to running with wolves
but he couldn’t guide us
through the wilderness
because it was gone.
6.
My sister ran away with a man
when she was eighteen.
Not really a wolf in sheep’s clothing
but maybe just a wolf
the way he robbed the lamb
from my parents’ flock.
They got married.
They bought a house.
They had a baby.
Then he felt the call of the wild and left.
Now she’s coming home.
7.
My brother ran away to Alaska,
the nearest to the dream.
He always was more serious
about life as an adventure,
the one who likes hunting,
extreme sports, the outdoors,
and flying helicopters,
which took years of training.
He pursued danger as a lifestyle,
soon he will go to war.
8.
I ran away to Philadelphia,
not exactly “the journey
that realized the impossible”
or however the trailer for
Natty Gann’s movie says it.
I had to get away after
crashing my car into a ditch
while drunk,
and spending the next six months
in programs designed
to make me a better person.
When the programs were over
I left home, sometimes I go back.
A few nights ago I watched
The Journey of Natty Gann
for the first time in years
and found myself asking,
“Could Natty exist today?”
A child driven into the wild
for the sake of love,
protected by a savage
and majestic creature
against what humans
she encounters.
Out of reach of the so-called
“civilized world”
she finds her father in the woods.
Sometimes my heart still seeks this,
to run away with wolves.
Morning light would
always wake me early
when I was four years old.
In my footie pajamas
I sat in the front room
of our trailer in the country,
looking at the lawn grow bright
as the sun passed above the treetops.
Soon my mother would rise,
prepare for work and leave
after the arrival of Mrs. Harding
who watched my baby sister,
my brother and me.
My morning vigil
was a quiet time,
a secret time for me,
before the day began
with its activities,
mostly playing in the woods
with my little brother.
My father would leave
for work much earlier,
usually before dawn,
to drive the school bus.
Time on a clock ruled
the comings and goings
of my parents,
when they awoke and
when they left the house
and when they returned,
but my schedule was
determined by morning light.
Late in October the time changed,
the sun came up an hour earlier,
I woke up an hour earlier, unaware,
I went and sat in the chair
by the window, my usual place.
I saw a thing I had
never seen so early in the morning,
a car leaving the driveway.
My young mind
had never comprehended
this part of the day
when my father
left for work
long before my vigil.
Due to some confusion,
my dreamlike child’s perception,
I saw two heads in the front seats
of the departing vehicle,
both of my parents running away.
I went outside
waving my arms and yelling,
but the car turned onto the road.
I ran to the end of the driveway,
into the middle of the road,
saw red taillights disappearing
beyond the horizon of a distant hill.
Still I chased it, running in that direction
down the road, tears now streaming
from my eyes, as cold asphalt chilled
the soles of my pajama feet.
Soon I realized it was hopeless,
they were gone, but I kept running,
the cornfield stretching out to my left,
a patch of forest to my right and then
old Mrs. Bailey’s house which I passed,
continuing on past more trees to
the house of my parents’ friends,
the Wickstrom’s,
nestled back in the wood.
I pounded on the door
until Deena Wickstrom
opened it to see me
standing there in pajamas.
“My parents drove away,”
I told her,
“They’ve left me all alone.”
She looked confused.
We got in her car
and drove back.
Deena knocked on our trailer door,
there was no answer,
so she tried the knob.
We went inside and down the hall,
to my parents’ bedroom door
on which she softly knocked again.
Moments later my disheveled mother
fresh from sleep emerged
and Deena explained her presence.
My parents had not run away,
I wanted to be happy,
but I was still afraid.
2.
My favorite childhood movie
was about a girl named Natty
whose father crosses the country
for a job cutting trees
leaving her in the city.
She doesn’t stay there long,
catching a train west,
setting out on a journey,
perilous in nature,
she takes up with a wolf
who seems sworn
to protect her,
until she reaches her father.
This movie affected me.
I watched it repeatedly.
3.
At the age of five
I went to school,
no more mornings
playing pet dog
with my brother,
now it was letters and numbers
and standing in line,
it was waking up on time,
ruled by the clock.
I learned to read and write
and with my brother
a plan did I concoct.
The first letter I ever wrote
to my mother said:
“I’m sorry mommy,
we are running away
from home.”
I made two copies,
one to go under each of our pillows.
The plan was this: in the middle of night
I would rise before the dawn
and take my brother away,
I did not know where,
not to a father that had abandoned us,
but into the woods,
on a journey of adventure,
my brother running beside me,
he had played pet dog,
now he would play pet wolf.
The plan was perfect,
the notes were under our pillows
but in the morning I slept too late.
The sun was up
when I crumpled up my note,
put it in the trash,
and went to get my brother’s,
where I found my mother
making his bed,
no note in sight.
She must have found it,
but she never mentioned it,
and I never tried to run away again.
4.
My sister did,
maybe five years later.
She was another convert
to the gospel of Natty Gann,
the good news of the woods,
of escape and of freedom.
I don’t remember the circumstance,
only her deciding to pack her
small child-sized suitcase
and walk into the woods
behind our house.
Of course she left a note.
After a few hours of her gone,
or maybe only twenty minutes,
my brother and I went looking.
We found her
sitting on the ground
pretending the branches
of a fallen tree
were a shelter.
She looked bored.
My brother and I decided
to make her a better shelter
by dragging large branches,
arranging them together,
lined up and leaning against
the fallen tree,
making a space that
could be crawled into.
We left my sister there,
and a few hours later,
or maybe twenty minutes,
she came home
and unpacked her suitcase.
The structure we had built
remained for years to come.
5.
Our practice pets were bunnies,
really we wanted a dog,
but really we wanted a wolf!
But we got bunnies.
The first one, Wiggles,
lived in a pen outside
in the summertime.
We came home
from church one day
to find the pen
ravaged by a dog.
Wiggles was nowhere in sight.
Then we had Brownie,
who lived longer
but died prematurely
due to a giant tumor
on his chest.
Finally it was time to get a dog!
In the classifieds we found
a “pure-bred” Siberian Husky
(papers were not included)
for a hundred dollars,
paid for by my father.
We named him Rocky.
Rocky never lived to be fully grown,
the wolf in him made him
prone to wander,
and though we lived in the woods,
it wasn’t too far from a busy road.
We buried him in the yard
next to Brownie.
At last there was Heidi
the yellow lab with blonde hair
like everyone else in the family,
who lived until us kids moved out
and a few years after that too.
Rocky was the closest we came
to running with wolves
but he couldn’t guide us
through the wilderness
because it was gone.
6.
My sister ran away with a man
when she was eighteen.
Not really a wolf in sheep’s clothing
but maybe just a wolf
the way he robbed the lamb
from my parents’ flock.
They got married.
They bought a house.
They had a baby.
Then he felt the call of the wild and left.
Now she’s coming home.
7.
My brother ran away to Alaska,
the nearest to the dream.
He always was more serious
about life as an adventure,
the one who likes hunting,
extreme sports, the outdoors,
and flying helicopters,
which took years of training.
He pursued danger as a lifestyle,
soon he will go to war.
8.
I ran away to Philadelphia,
not exactly “the journey
that realized the impossible”
or however the trailer for
Natty Gann’s movie says it.
I had to get away after
crashing my car into a ditch
while drunk,
and spending the next six months
in programs designed
to make me a better person.
When the programs were over
I left home, sometimes I go back.
A few nights ago I watched
The Journey of Natty Gann
for the first time in years
and found myself asking,
“Could Natty exist today?”
A child driven into the wild
for the sake of love,
protected by a savage
and majestic creature
against what humans
she encounters.
Out of reach of the so-called
“civilized world”
she finds her father in the woods.
Sometimes my heart still seeks this,
to run away with wolves.
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