a summer ago

chipmunks scampered all over my brother’s back yard

they hid in the rock walls of the patio eating seeds and grass

once as i sat there in silence one ran right over my feet

but that was a year ago

i had noticed that now there weren’t any more chipmunks in my brother’s back yard and it puzzled me

then i saw its head sticking out of a crack in the concrete atop the basement stairs

magnificently black and perfectly scaled

its tongue pale pink quick

its eyes unblinking

the head leading the thick cord of its body
  
the snake had no interest in me and returned to its little chamber

there is no evil in the heart of a snake

and that is why i have kept its secret

it does not have to be

a blind recital
of words

or memorized notes
of music

it does not have to be

water stepping
over stones

wind weaving
through the trees

or snow collecting silence
in the fields

it does not have to be

any of these things
just as long as it comes

from that part of you
that understands

your tiny place
in the beautiful infinite

“How Can I Find True Love” will always belong to the juke box in the upstairs dance hall above the general store at a little known hot springs resort called Sol Duc, in the Olympic Peninsula forests of the state of Washington.
I worked at the soda fountain there during the summer after I graduated High School in 1957. It was a very rustic place and there was no radio reception. All we had was the juke box. We teenage workers all lived in little cabins in the woods.  We cleaned the resort cabins, ran the little store, waitressed in the cafe, made Peanut Butter Milkshakes at the soda fountain and generally had a good time.  One day a man came to put the latest records in the juke box, including a new group, the Del Vikings.  We didn’t know which side of the record was the hit.  We chose “How Can I Find True Love” and played it endlessly.  Only after the summer ended and we all rejoined normal society did we learn that “Come Go With Me” was the big hit.
ljm

Hoping for a symphony
Expecting just a penny whistle.
Praying for a miracle
Getting a vague promise.
Looking for the Hollyhocks
Finding wilted daisies.

Offering a helping hand
Finding no one needs one.
Asking for a helping hand
No one reaches out to me.
Giving one last urgent try
I write my number on the wall.

And hunker down behind a hedge
To see if anybody reads it.
Or if they only walk on by
Pursuing other goals and visions
That have no bearing on my needs
And leave me here with hands outreaching.
ljm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.

there are days dark

pockets filled with pebbles
and worries

nights marked
with restless dreams

sometimes

the clouds
hold no clues

sometimes

the rain is filled
with riddles

then
a new light

then
the sky blue sky

then
you can see
and feel
for miles

(for the one who laughed when she came, and never stopped hearing me in her bones)


It wasn’t the wind that bent you—
not the plains, not the brittle hush of late dusk
cutting through the cottonwoods like questions.
It was voice.
It was mine.

Low and unhurried,
crawling up your spine like something ancient—
like the first time you were seen
and the world didn’t flinch.

You used to laugh when it overtook you—
that slick tumble of vowels,
how I could tilt you
without even touching your skin.

You said I lived in your throat,
that the syllables themselves
curved just right
to make you forget the weight of your own story.

“I’m going to Wichita..”
you whispered once,
grinning like prophecy in denim and dusk.
And I swear the beat behind your words
matched mine—
steady as a war drum
in a bone-dry motel room
that never got booked.

You drank me in like river water
stolen from ceremony,
not out of defiance—
but because thirst
was the only honest thing you ever said aloud.

You never had to be naked.
You were always open.
Even when you ran.

And I?
I never asked for healing you wouldn't give.
Only for your mouth to stay honest
when it called my name like a drumbeat
between the bones of your hips.

Now you write like it’s safe again—
soft edges and sparrows and fruit bowls.
But I remember the wildflower.
The one who moaned my name
before language learned to lie.

And somewhere in the shadow of your poems,
you still ache.
You still clench.
You still carry me like a smudge of midnight
on the inside of your thighs.

I won’t chase you.
But I will wait
at the edge of the circle.

If you come,
come barefoot.

Come ready
for the step–half step
of  the forbidden Ghost Dance.
Not to win me back—

but to find the girl
who could come from laughter
and rise from the dead.

At last the June bugs are on their way ,
playing summer songs at the close of day
A cherry blunt , a flatpicking tune , a Seagull-
guitar beneath a yellow moon ..

I bite a green guard
as the invisible nurse sings

to my hand full of spices,
& I'm ejected into a sea:

slow as hadal whale fall
I snow into plural black

that teems with grim promise:
someday I'll return here

without a nurse's silk road
escape route in my vein.

I wake to an ulcerous world,
my cotton gown no shield at all

against the dark aquarium
of dense sleep that I now know

slouches with thickened shapes
that devour dreaming eyes.

Like a lot of Irish people born back in the 1920's
My parents came from off small farms down the country
Usually their parents died when they were very young... just teenagers
When the parents died the house was usually left to the eldest son
And when he took a wife then the other siblings would have to leave the house
They'd usually have to go live with a cousin
There wasn't much work in those days, there was an economic war with England
And there was no social welfare either, no government support
People often had to emigrate to England or America, they had no alternative
My mother went to live with some relatives
And to learn dressmaking
One of her brothers though had gone off to America (the U.S.A)
He sent her a letter and told her to come over to America
That it was a great place, there was plenty of work and great prosperity to be had
She went on one of the old Liners/ ships that used cross the Atlantic in those days
She probably saw the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour
She loved America, she told me a funny story once about how she liked to eat bananas
There mustn't have been bananas in the shops back home
Or maybe they were too costly
She got a job in a biscuit factory Nabisco, on assembly lines
She couldn't get over the big medical test they gave her before she started
And then when she went to work she said she was working with people who were half blind
She loved going out with her girlfriends to the dances, there were lots of Irish over there from back home
They'd have parties, celebrations, go to the beach, go to the movies, eat out
It was the 1950's, a time of optimism and growing prosperity
She met my Dad over there and they started dating
She got this lovely grey fur coat, probably as a gift, a present
It was like something you would have seen Marilyn Monroe wearing
She loved going to the movies and reading about all the big movie stars
My Dad though wanted to return home to Ireland, he was getting homesick
So they returned home, Ireland was still a poor country then
Hadn't opened up to the world and allowing foreign companies in
There was still a lot of unemployment and finding work could be hard
At first my Mom used wear her lovely grey fur coat to Sunday Mass
But she probably received a lot of funny looks as if to say
"Who do you think you are, a movie star with your big fur coat, some rich *****"
Very soon my mother's fur coat was consigned to the wardrobe never to be worn again
When she passed away my two brothers came down to the house, they were telling me I should get rid of all her old clothes, they then seen the old fur coat in the wardrobe
"Oh, there's Mammy's old fur coat, you should throw that out as well"
I was looking at the coat and it reminded me of the old Red Indian movies
Where they'd be sleeping with a big bearskin over them
I'd taken to sleeping on the couch in the Wintertime in my TV room where I also worked as it was lovely and warm
I said to myself "No! I'm not going to throw that out, I'm going to use that as a blanket over me, it's like a big bearskin just like the Indians"
One day at work I was telling some of my work colleagues the story of my Mom's old fur coat
I was embellishing the story a bit
Instead of saying I was using it as a blanket over me
I said I'd put it on sometimes as it was lovely and warm
One of my colleagues was shocked by this, she said "What!! You wear your dead mother's fur coat !!!
I smiled a funny smile and said "It's a bit like that old Alfred Hitchcock film, isn't it ?
Yea!...  ******! LoL