the poem her belly marched through me as
one army.   From her nostrils to her feet

she smelled of silence.   The inspired cleat

of her glad leg pulled into a sole mass
my separate lusts
                            her hair was like a gas
evil to feel.   Unwieldy….

                                        the bloodbeat
in her fierce laziness tried to repeat
a trick of syncopation Europe has

—. One day i felt a mountain touch me where
I stood (maybe nine miles off).   It was spring

sun-stirring.   sweetly to the mangling air
muchness of buds mattered.   a valley spilled
its tickling river in my eyes,
                                              the killed

world wriggled like a twitched string.

Slap of leather magnified
Where Caesar’s legion marched
Setting sun of golden light
Though’ Roman tongues are parched.
Pewter helmets bronzely glow
Sweat cascades from dusty brow
Whilst o’er hill the Vandals mass
Salivating hot blood now.

Short swords cleat with marching rythm
Stabbing lances high and cold,
Metronome in stamping sandals
Onward now to victory’s fold.
Scarlet standards fly on high
The statement of intent is clear
Caesar’s men have promised now
To desiccate from ear to ear.

Grey ghost high above bears witness
Cadence of advancement grows,
Column strides in face of chaos
Lowered lance’s sharp steel shows.
Engagement in a stony basin
Flesh and blood, as one, combine,
Cut and slash in perfect order
Stab a *** and make him mine.

Darkness hides her chilling secret
Brooding silence stills the air,
Dawn’s first rays reveal  the spectre
Carnage killed with none to spare.
Grey ghost’s hang in gaunt remembrance
Vespers ring in solemn tone,
Gone forever Caesar’s promise
Dead in vanquished blood and bone.


Marshalg
Inspired by Anselm’s “Broken Promise to Caesar.”
21 March 2013

Let me tell you a story.

When I was young, I was convinced one of two things would happen:
I would either die young or I would live ignorant.
And I was allowed to believe it.
I was careful, avoiding snakes, spiders, dirt, human beings, love.
I horded books, enough to give myself a doctorate in any field.
And I was called paranoid. Idiotic. A fool. Freak. Doomed.
But, I kept living anyway. Destroyed, most of the strings in me cut.
But living. And I was allowed to believe it was a gift.

Of course, this is a fiction, lie, metaphor, but the truth stands.
Children are not born to be afraid. They are taught.
Fear is conditioned. Rewarded. Considered a virtue.
The wildness of youth is tromped upon by cleat-clad "caution."
Gone are bright eyes, reckless smiles, heads thrown back. Life.
Dull glances, insurance, cul-de-sacs, and bitten tongues reign. Fear.
And fear is one of the deepest scars we can inflict upon another.

This story is not mine, though I have been the one to tell it.
But I am human. An ocean. A fault line. A candle facing a storm.
This tale, in some chisled fascet, mirrors my own.
And it will continue as long as I draw breath.

I
Ancestral Houses
SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play.
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?

II
My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here.  A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My ****** heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.

III
My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged.  In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
Me soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door,
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk.
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.

IV
My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless min that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.
The primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.
V
The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered ***** of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

VI
The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no cleat fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

VII
I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east.  A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist
sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
"Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
"Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or
in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading
wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.
Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their
eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes.  No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or
of lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks.  Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the
moon.
I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my
worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more.  The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.

New boy, old shoes,
but he seems to know how.
Girl studies, furrowed brow.
Would you show me?
He grins.
You bet.

Brown girl, white boy
share soccer tricks
(fakes, spin kicks)
like tango steps
on the grassy field.

Lips clenched, Tania pauses
to repair beaded braids.
Tight shorts, mighty thighs,
her body a dark diamond
centered in the hips.

Tony smiles lots, curly red hair,
his head a pumpkin
on a pale post.

Nimble feet
for the ball compete,
their only touch.

After one-on-one,
three laps they run
side by side, chatting, unaware
they are perfectly aligned
in rise and fall of
knee to knee,
right to right,
cleat to cleat,
left to left.

Walking to the street, Tony chats,
Tania listens cradling ball to her chest
as they wander in synchrony,
step to step,
breath to breath,
making a start
heart to heart.

this dead city is alive with stray cats and missing person fliers, but the locals are dancing
on hardwood floors and [  ferocious yellow drums  ] are striking the black-most
and the back-most star, sinks
it's cleat into
banished sunrise
with  No End
in Sight !

the pride of most eyes,
too blind
to witness the free  
oblivious,
As corn-fed black holes
swallowing the wisdom of crowds... as the unctuous clouds
of our dismay
are ever, ever at play; where the thin pool thickens.
where our blown bubbles French with thick tongues... our open lips
rebuffed to an invisible  sheen.
the running of the Bulls is always an Alcatraz in a Free Will.
we dip into shallow cathedrals
where our Mercies slip through
nausea and dank  

and Islands
of Less Ocean... where
The weakest Archipelago
In a Severed Chain
Of Dreamt
Events

are you

those things heavy confused wonderful
to touch are cool on the shore of a beach
beneath light blue and seagulls effortless
on wind in a field sunkissed flowers by
your brow laying with your body
splendor and grass itchy on backs
pricking at cotton and getting hot sweat
delicately messes your makeup quickly
sprinting on loose noble perfect calves
to the arms of a lake and stabbing it
the pierced cleat of your excellent
figure and it's fire smokey and just
on a beach somewhere up into eve's
unsad cheeks (where there shines
unbelievably minute and gorgeous
stars)

I once gave you a sock
to cover your can of beer
one hot summer day
on a public field.

I sometimes wonder
where it’s been
since that Tuesday.

Perhaps it went on an early morning jog,
and saw all your neighborhood
looking up from gravel streets.

Maybe it sat at the bottom
of your bag of ***** clothes
when you went to the Laundromat
and offered a spare dryer sheet
to a lady who smelled like
red delicious apples and cheddar cheese,

or maybe it found its way
to the top of Mt. Washington
in the corner of your trunk
behind a bag of turkey sandwiches.

There’s a chance it could have been found
by your daughter’s friend
at her eighth birthday party
and become a thwarted puppet-foe
to her warrior princess doll,

or found by your Labrador
and buried in his favorite spot
under that crooked tree in the yard,
only to be picked up by a hawk
and placed in the bed of her nest.

It’s possible you could have
packed it in your suitcase
on your first trip to Spain,
and walked with it on Las Ramblas
when you bought pitaya at the market.

Perhaps it never left
the bottom of your gym bag
and remained folded
inside your right cleat,

but I like to think
it accidentally fell
on the edge of the Grand Canyon
during your spring break trip
to be captured in a family photo
later printed and framed
in someone’s house in some exotic place
where it could be, in memory, forever.

Nobody told me to stay in my seat
and prepare for this ride they say is life
so than I stood right up and took a cleat
It seems that I'm cut by a bowie knife

It's best you leave now before I hit you
for I feel I'm in a heavy weight bout
get up get gone yeah I said it girl shoo
I'm crazy for my heart was just ripped out

going home and sitting in a corner
feels nice for I can't stand so many people
they make feel like I'm a foreigner
who climbed on up but can't get down a steeple

all I've done is become a poster child
of what not to become so I'm goin wild

Down the deer path, thick with ****,
to every hard to find
creek bank in the world,
there's a busted dinghy,
a forgotten sloop dream,
with a mudstuck sprung transom,
a sky beckoning bow,
tied to a cattail or some other
tenuous stem.

Down the deer path, thick with ****,
the willows, reefed in a gale,
cringe in the rising crest,
and a busted dinghy
lifts on a swell and bellows
against the cleat to slide clean
to the sea, to a young boy's
landlocked dream of spray,
hard weathers and anywhere
but here night-watches.

All the colors of elsewhere,
the splendid regatta of the never-seen,
the gleaming spice and bent strange
tongues of the could have been - mold,
dip and sigh, lift and strain,
again and again,
upon a cleat,
upon a rope,
upon a cattail
or some other
tenuous
stem.

It isn't your mystery
Or history
That makes me stick around.
It isn't because you pound
Away at me,
Or have the right key.
I stay
Because you just may
Be a habit, an addiction,
Just a whirl-twirl fiction,
greasy slab of meat,
***** spike on the bottom of my cleat.

Getting led on
Is the worst
It's like getting on a roller coaster
Slowly going up the long steep incline
Your heart ready to exit your ribcage
Your stomach ready to plummet faster than the ride
Then just before the roller coaster drops
A gigantic soccer cleat appears out of thin air
And kicks you off the ride

I'm like a dog
                        You could bash me, beat me, and cleat
                 I'll come back for more. There's no sense in arguing.
Just put me back in my cage.

I'm too simple
                         I'll bite the hands that feed me until there's
                 No more room on his arc. I could use a swim anyway.
Don't tell me what I'm getting into.

Think me stupid.
                          Fall for your tricks that bewilder and trips
                 that make me fall but foundation needs to be invincible.
I'll learn to build on a speckle of light.

Please count me out.
                           There's no sense in dying over others beliefs
                   especially since I'm in stuck inside this cloud in hell chatting
with Hades. What's left for me now?

Don't remember.
                            It won't help when I'm on that marble ledge
                    that's where you once stood. Don't count on me when
you're east not west and I'm all you got     left.

It wraps around your heart
And whispers temptation in your ear
You nod mindlessly as
Its pours down your throat
So easy, like honey
Your soul steps out of your body
And your filled with cheap happiness
Which quickly fades to sadness and anger
All of a sudden you're alone
Crying to the stars for love
But all they do is laugh at you
You cry for hope
But all is gone
The moon reflects on the clears bottles
You see yourself frowning
At this demon
That entered your body though a bottle
Someone comes to help
But they fall down
And stay there
You close your eyes
And wish your mind would adjust
When the sun rises
Your soul has re-entered your body
Your mouth tastes of vile
Your hair is a tangled mess
And you have lost a shoe
The cleat ****** sun shines on your friends
They are also waking up
You stand up and brush the dust and dead grass off you
And ask yourself the question you can already answer
What happened last night?

The coach signaled timeout and called the team to the sidelines.  There were eight minutes left in the biggest game of their lives, and they would be playing for three minutes with a severe disadvantage.  They had committed a succession of penalties within a span of less than 60 seconds, and they would now be playing without three men on the field.  In lacrosse this is referred to as ‘Man Down.’  

Usually it’s only ‘One Man Down,’ or at the most, ‘Two Men Down,’ but few watching that day had ever seen a team go ‘Three Men Down.’  This meant that their star goalie T.J. Braxton was only going to have three defenders in front of him instead of the usual six.

T.J. had been playing great, but he now had to play for two minutes with three men missing in front of him and then the third minute still missing one. It was going to seem like an eternity.  The coach looked over at T.J. and he was standing off to the side by himself not wanting to either look or talk to anyone during the intermission.  The coach understood this behavior because he had been a goalie himself and decided to leave T.J. alone — totally immersed within his own thoughts.

As they did the cheer to break the huddle, it was for their goalie …”1, 2, 3, Go T.J.”  What would happen now brought more pressure than any goalie should ever have to withstand.  Even going just ‘One Man Down’ would in many cases result in a goal for the other team.  Going ‘Two Men Down’ almost ensures the other team a goal, and anything beyond that just puts your goalie at the mercy of the shooters on the other team.

    And Tonight There Would Be No Mercy To Be Found

T.J. already had 18 saves up to this point with only half a quarter left to play in regulation. Saves are when a goalie either blocks or deflects an offensive shot from the other team. He had only let in three goals all game, and the score was tied at 3-3.  

Pennhurst was a powerful public school with large and fast athletes.  They had not been playing lacrosse as long as T.J.’s private (all-boys) school, Haverland Academy, but their natural athletic ability and inner toughness were making up for any experience lost.  

T.J. would have to defend his goal missing three men in front of him for two minutes and then missing one man for the next sixty seconds.  It was his team’s possession coming out of the timeout, and it was all they could do being so shorthanded to even get the ball across the mid-field line.  The coach’s tactic was not to shoot the ball now but to stall and to try and take as much time off the clock as they could until they could get more players back on the field.  T.J. stood rock solid in the center of the ‘crease’ in front of his goal and looked squarely at the goalie at the other end of the field. The ‘crease’ was the large circle surrounding the goal that no offensive player from the other team could enter. He seemed to not be following the ball and his coach wondered what was going on inside his head.

Playing goalie is 80% mental, and he was hoping his star goalie wasn’t going to have a melt down when his team needed him the most.  T.J. would normally be very active inside his own goal shouting instructions to the defensemen in front of him and trying to best position them for the oncoming attack.    

               Something ‘Seemed’ Different Tonight

T.J. had entered a new zone, one that he had never been in before, and one that only he could understand.  As Haverland’s lead attackman charged the opposing goal, the ball fell out of his stick. It was immediately picked up by the opposing goalie and ‘cleared’ to a midfielder standing outside and to his left.  The midfielder made one more pass to an attackman, and the ball was coming T.J.’s way with only three defenders in front of him to help stop the charge. The ball was again passed to one of their senior captains and their strongest midfielder.  

He juked left as he faked a pass and then as he cradled the ball wildly, he headed straight toward T.J. in the goal.  When he got within fifteen feet of the goal he stopped, set his feet, and with a violent and twisting motion fired an overhand shot across his right shoulder at the ground two feet in front of where T.J. now stood.

T.J. was now eighteen and a half and had been playing goalie since he was seven years old.  He had seen and defended almost every kind of shot and from every angle in those eleven years. He had just never had to do it before with almost no defense in front of him.  As the shot left the midfielders stick, T.J. reacted.  He took two steps forward and was able to scoop the ball out of the air at ankle height before it was able to bounce off the ground. Bounce shots were more difficult to save, and his accumulated instinct and experience allowed him to get this one and at least for now keep the score tied at 3-3.

T.J. ran behind his own goal toward the end line. With the ball in his stick he was trying to take time off the clock.  Only one opposing player chased him, and he was able to do a 180-degree spin, avoid that player, and run back out in front of his goal.  He then cleared the ball, the entire length of the field, to a midfielder standing in the far left corner.  T.J.’s team had the ball within thirty feet of the opposing goal with only two minutes left to run in penalty time.

T.J.’s offense decided it was time to step up and play big.  They managed to take a full minute off the clock with uncanny passing until the referee finally called stalling and gave the ball back to the other side.

As the ball came back in T.J’s direction, two of his penalized players retook the field.  They were now playing with only a ‘one man down’ disadvantage and for only sixty more seconds.

The opposing team set up in a perimeter in front of his goal passing the ball from man to man and then behind T.J.’s goal in an attempt to unbalance a still weakened defense.  As the ball went behind the net, T.J. rotated inside the crease never taking his eye off the ball.  He thought they were setting him up for something sneaky because his fundamental blocking skills on normal shots were so strong. More than anything he didn’t want to give up a cheap goal, and he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out that his suspicions had been correct.

As they passed the ball back and forth behind his goal, an attackman turned and tried to lob the ball over the back of the goal, and T.J.’s stick, to an opposing midfielder who was charging the front of the goal from about twenty-five-feet away.  They were hoping to catch T.J. mesmerized in what was going on behind the net and then reverse field and go in the one direction no one ever expected — over the back of the goal.  

It didn’t work!  As the ball left the midfielders stick, T.J. jumped high in the air and intercepted the pass in the shooting strings of his goalie stick.  He then spun around and ran directly to the out of bounds line to his right. It was beyond the defensive box, and he stood there waiting for someone to challenge him.  He was again trying to take precious seconds off the clock to get his team back to full strength. Although a goalie, T.J. was the fastest player on his team and that speed was like money in the bank to a team that was struggling and in trouble with time running out.

He managed to get the penalty down to twenty two seconds before he finally dished the ball off to another long stick defender and then quickly moved back in front of his goal.  That defensemen got across midfield just before another penalty would have occurred for not advancing the ball.  With only seventeen seconds left on the penalty, the offense passed the ball to the four corners looking for a man who was ‘hot’ (open) who could take the shot and finally break the tie.  With only three seconds left in the penalty their best attackman, John Erasmus, took the ball in his stick and with his left hand fired a side angle shot at the right side of the goal.  It was a great shot, but their goalie made a heroic save. He was also a senior and had transferred into Pennhurst two years ago from a Lacrosse powerhouse school in northern Maryland.

With both teams now at full strength, the ball went back and forth for the final five minutes with very few shots taken at either end.  The ones that were taken were weak and from great distance, and both goalies easily picked them up and started the ball going the other way.  Each shot was critical now because the game was tied with time running out.  Possession was more important than losing the ball to the other team by taking a poor shot.  As the lights shone brightly high above the scoreboard, time ran out in regulation.  The game would now go to sudden death overtime, and it would become about the strength of the face-off men and how hot each goalie was going to be.

    It Was Now About The Face-Off Man And The Goalies

In sudden death, the first team to score wins!  No second chances here it’s do or die time, and everything is amped up to an entirely new level.  Many times, the winner of the face off at midfield wins the game because everything is geared towards that one shot, and the pressure on the opposing goalie is tremendous.  Unless the goalie can isolate himself in a ‘zone of invincibility,’ the chances of blocking a shot in overtime due to a lost face off are not very good.  Just like in the NFL, where the coin toss often determines the winner in overtime, the face-off is like that coin toss only with skill and not luck determining the winner.  T.J. thought back to all the coaches and mentors that had brought him to where he was standing tonight.  They were all somewhere up in the stands, and they were all living and dying with him tonight in the goal.

      T.J. Decided That Tonight It Would Be About Life

The Captains met at the middle of the field as the referee explained the rules of sudden death.  All who were listening thought that the term was aptly named.  They shook hands again and ran back to the huddles on their respective sidelines.  Both coaches gave their overtime strategies to their teams, and they did one more cheer before retaking the field.  Both face off men walked slowly toward each other at the center mid-field line and stared each other directly in the eye.  

The physical disparity between the two players at mid-field was huge.  Haverland’s best face off man, George Arle, was 5’6’’ tall and 160 lbs. Pennhurst’s face off man, B.J. Radford, had been an All-State quarterback on the football team and was 6’3’’ and 225 lbs.  Although Lacrosse was not his primary sport,  he had played it for the last four years and by anyone’s account he was a ‘stud player.’  The skill in taking face offs is unlike any other in Lacrosse.  It’s more similar to recovering a fumble in football or picking up a loose five-dollar bill dropped on the floor in Penn Station in New York.  It’s uncontrolled mayhem with the skill to do it only evident to those who have been there. And it’s those players who know painfully well what it takes to win the fight for the ball.

Although T.J.’s face off man George had had a good season, he always struggled against players that were that much bigger than him and usually lost the ball.  The ref. positioned the ball between the two boys sticks who were both crouched down and ready at mid-field.  The whistle blew, and George lost the ball as B.J. picked it up and charged right over George’s left shoulder.  He was headed in a straight line right toward T.J. who was standing fixed and ready in front of his goal.  B.J. passed the ball to a midfielder who kept it only a second before passing it to an attackman who was off to the right of the goal.  The attackman looked to his left and faked a pass to his right.  He then spun around and with all his might fired a bounce shot on an angle from the right facing side of Haverland’s goal.  

T.J. stepped forward, scooped the ball up on the first bounce, and in one fluid motion flipped the ball out to a defenseman on the left perimeter. This player cradled it inside his long stick as he took off down the sideline and across midfield.  The defenseman made a pass to a middie on the extreme other side of the field who then passed to an attackman. This man ran around behind the net and came out on the other side in front of the goal, shot the ball, but it went wide right.  The other team was closest to the ball when it went out of bounds, so it was Pennhurst’s possession, and it was coming back T.J.’s way.

Their goalie cleared the ball left to a long stick defenseman, who in turn made a long pass directly to an attackman, and the ball was once again in the oppositions stick less than thirty feet from the goal T.J. was defending.  This attackman had no intention of passing.  He put his head down and charged straight ahead toward T.J.  As his coach was screaming at him to pass, and it the midst of five defensive players, he fired off a shot.  It came at a side angle, and, with all of the players surrounding the shooter, it was hard for T.J. to see the ball come off the kid’s stick.  

When T.J. finally did see the ball, it had passed the head of his stick, and he was just able to get a piece of the ball with the bottom of his shaft. It was just enough to deflect the ball upwards and over the goal and into the chain link fence fifty feet behind the crease.  On instinct alone, T.J. ran after the ball and being closest to it when it went out of bounds, he picked it up in his stick and slowly walked forward. This gave his midfielders time to transition back up to the other end of the field.

T.J. was living on borrowed time.  Making one save in overtime was huge, but making two, and one with only the shaft of his stick to save it all, was stretching the limits of whatever luck the team had left.  T.J. easily passed the ball to an unguarded defenseman who ‘walked’ the ball up-field and then tossed it to a midfielder just in front of the offensive box.  

The offensive box is the restrained and shorter ‘boxed-out’ area right in front of the goalie and where most shots are taken, and most goals are scored. The midfielder made a pass to his left to an attackman, who tried to make a long looping pass across the face of the box, but it was intercepted by one of the oppositions long stick middies and passed quickly to another midfielder as it transitioned back again towards T.J. This time the ball was coming straight at T.J., and it had taken less than five seconds to get there.  His team was not set yet and this charge could be the end of it all.

T.J.’s team had been caught napping in an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty.  Pennhurst’s top midfielder again had the ball, and he was charging at T.J. who had only two players set and not the normal six in front of him to play defense.

Surprisingly to T.J., this player then made a pass to the extreme right corner and that attackman ran behind T.J.’s goal giving his defense more time to reset.  This player then made a pass to the left side, and it was once again in the stick of their best midfielder, Matt Makritis.  Midfielders, or Middies, as they’re often called are many times the best athletes on the team.  They have to play both offense and defense and run the entire length of the field while their shift is on. Makritis was a high school All-American, and he was charging at full speed toward the left front facing side of T.J.’s goal.

                       T.J. Was An All-American Too!

T.J. was also an All-American and had recently been on the front cover of ‘Inside Lacrosse Magazine’ and featured as the #1 player coming out of High School Lacrosse that year.  He thought to himself that all of that press would be meaningless if he allowed this shot to go in.  The opposing midfielder continued toward the crease unguarded, got within ten feet of the goal, and fired point blank at T.J.  No fancy bounce shots or behind the back this time.  This shot was straight at T.J.’s head, and from less than ten feet away. T.J. caught the ball in the fat part of his goalie sticks net.  It didn’t stay there though.  The power of the shot caused it to come out of his stick, in what is referred to as a rebound, as it rolled ten or twelve feet out in front of the goal.

A second midfielder then picked up the ball, and not lifting it from the ground, fired a shot right back at T.J. This was more like a golf shot than a lacrosse shot, and T.J. struggled to see from which direction the ball was coming.  As the ball came back at T.J. at a severe angle, headed toward the left backside of the net, he stretched his body out like a goalie in the NHL.  Doing a full split in front of the net, he was able to get a piece of the ball with his right cleat and deflect the ball off to the left side of the goal. As the ball rolled harmlessly toward the far side of the endline, the referee blew his whistle.  The first three-minute overtime period had ended.

    They Had Survived Sudden Death For Three Minutes

Both teams huddled tightly with their coaches and trainers.  This time though, T.J. didn’t leave the crease at all.  He was leaning against the goal with his back turned to the field. It was almost as if he was talking to someone you couldn’t see and totally immersed in a world of his own.  There are several times in a man’s life that define and underline not only who he is, but who he will then become.  This was one of those times for T.J.

                                 And He Knew It

Both teams wearily took the field.  The pressure of an extremely tight game, and then surviving one overtime period, had taken its toll.  As the face-off men bent low and readied for the ball, T.J.’s back was still facing the field.  When he heard the whistle blow he spun around and it was like someone twice his 6’2’’ size was playing goalie.  He seemed to fill the entire net with his presence and there was an ‘aura’ coming from him that surrounded the entire defensive end of the field.

Once again, George lost the face off to the All-State quarterback and star midfielder, B.J. Radford.  This time however, the look on B.J.’s face was different.  Although fairly new to Lacrosse, inside his chest beat the heart of a champion.  He almost stepped on George as he picked up the ball and headed straight over the mid-field line and directly at T.J.  This senior captain had no intention of passing, and he was going to ‘ice’ the game for his teammates and fans.  B.J. was not known as a great shooter but more for his defensive skills. He was a great athlete though, and this charge was not to be taken lightly by anyone on the defensive end of the field.  

                 B.J. Knew This Was His Moment

Without stopping or setting his feet, he raised his stick above his head and shot the ball toward the right corner of the net at over ninety miles an hour.  T.J. saw this one all the way and caught the ball in his stick.  He then ran out of the goal and passed B.J. who was still coming his way as he charged past him and headed straight down the field.  T.J. was out of the defensive box and headed toward the mid-field line.  He was looking at nothing in front of him except the opposing goalie who was now staring at him with an incredulous look on his face inside the opposing crease.

Everyone there that night had their mouth’s open in awe.  No one expected the goalie to ever make the final break, and no one watching had ever seen a goalie possessed with such speed.  The other team was in awe too and just kept watching him run. They were all guarding open men who they were sure T.J. would eventually pass the ball to.

                                  He Didn’t Pass

When he crossed the midfield line, the fans went wild and stood up.  One of his midfielders had the presence of mind to stay back behind the midfield line so that an offsides wouldn’t be called.  In Lacrosse, you always need at least three men back plus the goalie in the defensive end.  Once T.J. crossed midfield, one of the midfielders had to stay back.

T.J. approached the offensive box in front of their goalie with only one thing on his mind.  He had been acutely watching this kid all day and he had noticed one thing.  This was a fundamentally sound and ‘play up’ goalie and one would who would rise to the occasion when the heat was on.  He had transferred into Pennhurst only two years ago and based on his great skill, he had gotten them this far.  He had one weakness though that T.J. had observed — he couldn’t handle the off-speed shots, especially over his left shoulder.

The left shoulder is opposite the goalie stick’s head if you’re right handed. In his case, the only weakness that T.J. had seen,
other than his struggle with off-speed shots, were those directed high up and left.  Like a changeup in baseball, the off-speed shot often confused the goalie’s timing and could cause him to over or under react at just the right time.  T.J. continued to charge the goal.

By this time, two defensemen from Pennhurst were running from both sides to get to T.J. before he could shoot, but his speed was too much.  As he approached the crease from the right side, he raised his stick above his head.  He threw his lower right elbow at the goalie as if executing a shot.  His stick-head never moved, but the goalie bit on the fake.  He waved the head of his stick high right and then easily lobbed the ball over the Pennhurst goalie’s left shoulder.  The referee blew the whistle — the game was over —and T.J.’s team had finally won.

The other goalie dropped to his knees and then put both hands on the ground in front of him.  T.J. went over and picked him up saying: “You may have lost on the scoreboard tonight, but you never gave up. I’m proud to have played against you.”

Haverland had just won the State Championship, and most watching said it was the greatest goalie performance at any level that they had ever seen.  T.J. was voted ‘Most Valuable Player’ of the game. In the fall, he would be off to a top 10 Lacrosse University where he would major in Criminal Justice and take his goalie skills to an even higher level.

T.J.’s coach told him after the game that you can play lacrosse for your entire lifetime and never be able to play or recreate what you just did.  His future college coach, who had been in the stands watching, came down on the field and put his arm around T.J. after the game and told him the same thing.  He went on to say: “T.J., I had my whole speech ready before you went into overtime.  I thought I might have to come down here and tell you that although you lost — you lost really well.

   T.J. Did Not Want To Believe That Losing Well Was Really Possible!

“You had made all those heroic saves throughout the game for your team, and if you had to lose, it would have been a great way to do it.  The only problem with my prepared speech is that you didn’t lose. As I watched you in the goal with your back turned to the field as the second overtime period started, I said to my assistant coach Dave, who’s over talking to your folks, that our new and future goalie is in a zone that few can ever get to.  He will not be scored on again tonight.  Tonight, and for however long this game lasts — he is truly invincible. And I don’t believe I’ve ever used that word to describe a player before.”

Many years passed and one day T.J got an email from his old high school coach.  The coach told him that once again his school, Haverland, would be playing for the State Championship and he wanted to run his pre-game speech by T.J. before his boys took the field.  It was short and to the point.  What he wanted to tell the boys was: “It wouldn’t be the number of players on the field but who those players were and what was coming from inside their hearts that would make all the difference.”  He then went on to tell the story of T.J. in the State Championship Game that took place over ten years before.  

Some of the boys had heard the story, but all were in awe listening to the emotion and passion in their coach’s voice as he retold the story again.  It was like replaying that game with the current Haverland players and right before the most important game that most of them would ever play.  

Haverland won the State Championship again that day and many of the boys said that it was the pre-game speech about T.J. and his team’s overtime victory that fueled their desire and commitment to make it happen.  It was also a close game, and with two minutes to go the score was again tied. Five times during the game they had gone ‘one-man’ down but had only allowed one goal to be scored during those five uneven possessions by the other team.  Haverland was then able to strip the ball from their opponent twice in the final two minutes and convert both into scores — ending the game at 7-5.

Along a lonely hallway in the back of Haverland’s new athletic center hangs a plaque with the story of that night so many years ago.  But to T.J., and all the members of that legendary team, the thing that hangs highest — is their refusal to lose.

The possibility of being invincible would stay inside T.J. and all who were there to watch him play that night. He learned that at the end of the streak where luck ends, sometimes you have to enter that zone …

                                 And Just ‘Will It’ To Happen.

What’s to become of a setting sun that cannot be with you always even though it will return in the morning to ask your sleepy eyes if you made love to the moon?

What’s to become of a solitary moon adorned with my kisses to be sent to you each night in remembrance of the past and a hope for a dream that is so old it has borne children that have taken their place in the heavens?

What’s to become of a dry creek bed that once ran wild to your seas in anticipation of becoming one in a mating ritual that can no longer move even the smallest pebble when once boulders shuddered to think of the passion play that ruled the night?

What’s to become of the lone wolf who howled each night in your forests that have now burned to the ground with not even a remnant of smoke from a fire that consumed our past lives and is merely ashen powder with no resemblance to the beauty that he once devoured?

What‘s to become of a stone tied to a leg attached to a body that once had a heart that was held in your hands and instead is drowning and decaying under the weight of oceans that will make quick work of its flesh leaving only the chain that mercilessly did your ***** work?

What’s to become of the abandoned sailboat with clanging hardware on a mast that stands alone without a sail to catch the wind; instead left to drift aimlessly while you walk away from the dock where you dropped the knife next to the cleat where you cut it loose and set it free?

The eyes drink,
Even before we think,
Then we go on and cheat,
Because we are caught in a bogus cleat.

doing just the body lips
girl full of sits
short skirt barely
inches into
smooth mile
becomes

hands neatly
collapsed in
perfect house of
curled beauty

from which
twitch

two spates
of fragile wrist
twist upon

eery limb
of excellent
arm

metting
just clasp
of shoulder

under
which fits

over
cleat of
marble neck

holding hover
of heaven's
strand:

a face like
she so
April
drunk inside with
flowers Spring

and everywhere

  (constantly)


    MUSiC

A Down the Railway Rhyme!

I walked the line
to where the steel once ran.
I walked the time line…
Where the rail gap clatter
gave way to wild bird chatter.
Where commuter crush
became deer grazing in a siding’s hush…

Wild flowers, weeds & shrubs
flourish where the occasional sleepers lay
and the odd rail cleat on the track bed ,
remind us where the rails once led,
till those who govern these things said…
Too expensive!…No more the train.
Let the trucks & roads take the strain.

Today… Nature’s Food Chain
replaces yesterday’s Freight Train
Wolf’s Bain and Wart’s Ease
instead of strap hanger’s
carriage squeeze…
meant kids would sit on their mother’s knees

Today there’s a diving Sparrow Hawk
where once 3rd Class picked up on small talk
and 1st was treated to business ‘squawk’.
The river & passing pastures have seen it all;
rail trade that kept a town alive
gives way to help the wildlife thrive.

It was 3:00 a.m. in Bowie Maryland in the year of our Lord, 1861.

A drum roll passed by in the night not more than a mile away, and Billy couldn’t tell whether it was coming from the Yanks or the Rebs. Both of Billy’s brothers had left home in the past two months.  His oldest brother Jeb having joined the Army of Northern Virginia, while his next oldest brother Seth was now fighting for the Union with Major General George G. Meade in the Army of the Potomac. Billy’s family was like a lot of other families in Maryland, and the Western Shore of Virginia, with some men choosing to fight for the North while many chose the South.

Billy was just about to turn sixteen and still had not chosen his side.  He had friends and family fighting for both and knew that the time was getting short for him to choose.  He couldn’t imagine fighting against either of his older brothers, but once he decided the possibility would definitely be there.  Billy pulled the bed covers over his head and thought back to a more pleasant time — a day when his two older brothers had taken him fishing in Mayo along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

His brothers couldn’t have been more different.  Jeb was large and domineering with a personality that fit the profile of the typical soldier or warrior.  Seth was more studious and would rather have his nose stuck in a book than behind the sights of a Springfield Rifle Model 1861.  The 1861 was the most widely used rifle on both sides. The south called their version the Fayetteville Rifle, and Billy’s Dad had given his to Jeb just before he died last year.  Billy had never fired the big gun and had only carried it for his father and brother when they went on their weekly hunts for deer and small game.

Billy Finally Drifted Off To Sleep …

The next morning, his mother told him that Union soldiers had passed by in the night under the command of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth.  They were on their way to Alexandria Virginia to join with Colonel Orlando B. Wilcox in an attempt to retake Alexandria and drive the confederates out.  It was just too close to Washington D.C. and had to be secured. For several months confederate troops had been infiltrating Maryland and sightings had been reported from Hagerstown to Anne Arundel County. Billy wondered about the fighting that would take place later that week and hoped that wherever his brothers were engaged they were safe and out of harms way.

After breakfast, Billy decided to spend the day fishing along the Patuxent River just southeast of his home.  He rode their old Tennessee Walker George as his blue tick hound Alfie ran along side. It took Billy an hour to get to the river and he used the time to once again try and decide what the right thing was for him to do.  He had sympathies for both sides, and the decision in his mind was neither black nor white.  He wished that it was because then he could get this all over with and leave today. Billy was famous in his area for being able to get across the water. Whether it was a makeshift raft, dugout canoe, or just some drift lumber available, Billy had made it across long open stretches of the Chesapeake Bay — never once having been deterred.

He Was An Early Day Chesapeake Waterman

Billy returned home from fishing that day and found his house burned to the ground.  His mother was standing out front still in tears with her arms wrapped around Billy’s little sister Meg.  A rear-guard unit from Ellsworth’s column had gotten word that Billy’s brother Jeb was fighting for the South and just assumed that the entire family were southern sympathizers. Billy’s mother tried to tell the soldiers that her middle son was fighting with the Army of The Potomac.  No matter how hard she pleaded with the sergeant in charge, he evacuated all in the house (Billy’s Mother, Sister and Aunt Bess) and then covered the front porch in coal oil, lit it with a torch, and then just rode away. He never even turned around to watch it burn.

That Union Sergeant had now made Billy’s decision crystal clear, at least for the moment.  Once he got his mother, sister, and aunt resettled, he would make his way to Virginia and join with his older brother in the confederate cause. He remembered his brother Jeb telling him that the Confederate Soldiers had more respect, and he couldn’t imagine them doing to his family what the Union Army had just done.

It took Billy two weeks to get his Mother resettled with family up in Annapolis.  He then packed the little that remained of his belongings, loaded up old George, and said goodbye to the life he knew.  It would be a week’s ride to get past the Union Camps in Southern Maryland and Northern Virginia, and he knew he would have to stay in the tree line and travel at night.  If caught by the Yanks, his only chance of survival would be to join up with them, and he couldn’t imagine fighting for those who had just destroyed his home. His conviction to get past Fredericksburg was now determined and strong.

All Billy had to arm himself with was an 1860 percussion squirrel rifle that his brothers had bought him before going off to war.  It was only.36 caliber, but still gave Billy some feeling of security as he slowly passed through the trees in the dark. His plan was to hug the western shore of the bay, as far as Charlotte Hall, and then take two short ferry rides. His first would be across the Patuxent River and then one across the Potomac on his way to Fredericksburg.  He prayed and he hoped that the ferry’s he found were not under Union control.

Billy spent his first night in Churchton along the western shore. It was quiet and uneventful, and he was actually able to get a good night’s sleep.  He had run out of oats for George though, and in the morning needed to find an understanding farmer to help fortify his mount.  As he approached the town of Sunderland, he saw a farmer off to his right (West) tending to his fields.  Billy approached the farmer cautiously making sure he rode around in front of the farmer and not approaching from the rear.

The farmer said his name was Hawkins, and he told Billy there were oats over in the barn and two water troughs in front of the house.  He also said that if he was hungry there was a woman inside who would fix him something to eat.  He then told him that he could spend the night in his barn but since it was still early in the day, he said he was sure that Billy wanted to move on.

Billy thought it was strange that the man asked no other questions of him.  He seemed to accept Billy for all that he was at the moment — a young man riddled with uncertainty and doubt and on his way to a place he still wasn’t sure was right for him.  The look in the man’s eyes pointed Billy in the direction he now needed to go, and as he turned to thank him for his hospitality the man had already turned back to his plow.

In the barn were three large barrels of oats and five empty stalls. Two of the stalls looked like they had recently been slept in because there were two empty plates and one pair of socks still lying in the stall furthest to the left.  Billy fed George the oats and then walked outside.  Everything looked quiet in the house as he approached the front door.  He knocked twice, and a handsome looking woman about his mother’s age answered before he could knock a third time.  The woman’s name was Martha and as she invited Billy inside, she asked him when was the last time he had eaten?
Yesterday morning Ma’m, Billy said, as Martha prepared him some cold pork and cooked beans.  Billy was so hungry that he thought it was the best thing that he had ever tasted. Martha then told Billy to be careful in the woods because both union and rebel forces had been seen recently and there were stories of atrocities from both sides as they passed on their way.  Martha also said she had heard that Union forces had burned a farm up in Bowie a few weeks ago.  Billy stayed quiet and didn’t utter a word.

Billy Remained Quiet

After he finished his meal, Billy thanked Martha who had packed salt pork for him to take on his way.  Billy walked George to the water trough and waited as George drank.  He looked across the fields and he could sense what was coming.  This tranquil and pastoral scene was soon to be transformed into blood and gore as the epic struggle between North and South finished its first year. It was late fall in 1861 and Billy’s birthday was in two more weeks.  This was never the way he envisioned turning sixteen to be.

Billy thanked Martha, put the salted pork in his pouch, and remounted George. Martha said:  Whichever side you are riding to, may God be with you, young man.  Billy thought it was strange that she knew where he was heading without him telling.  He then also thought that he was probably not the first young traveler to stop at this farm for some kind words and sustenance. He rode back out in the field to thank the farmer, but when he got to the spot where he had met him before, the farmer was not there.  Billy wondered where he could have gone.  As he rode back down the cobbled dirt road, he noticed a sign at the end where it reconnected with the main road — Billett’s Farm. That wasn’t the name the farmer had told him when they were first introduced before.

Hawkins He Had Said

Billy worked his way towards Charlotte Hall.  From there he would head East to Pope’s Creek and try to get on the short ferry that would take him across the Potomac River and over to Virginia. Then Billy was sure he would finally be safe.  Tonight though, he only made it as far as Benedict Maryland, and he again needed to find secluded shelter for the night. Benedict was right along the banks of the Patuxent River where the farming was good, and the fishing was even better.

It was getting dark when Billy spotted what he was looking for.  There was a large farm up ahead with two large barns and three out buildings.  Billy sat inside the trees and waited for dark.  It was inside the outbuilding furthest to the east that he intended to stay the night.  As darkness covered the fields, Billy walked slowly towards the large shack.  He led George behind him by his lead and hoped that he would remain quiet.  George was an older horse, now fifteen, and seemed to always know what was required of him without asking.  Not that you can really ask a horse to do anything, but George did just seem to know.

Billy got to the outbuilding and put his ear to the back wall to see if he could hear anything from inside.  When he was sure it was safe, he walked around front to the door, opened it, and he and George quickly walked inside.  In the very dim moonlight, Billy could see that it was about 20’ X 20’ and had chopped wood stored against the back wall.  There were also two empty stalls and a loft up above about 10’ X 20.’  Billy decided to sleep downstairs in case he had to get away fast, and after tying George to the furthest back stall, he laid down in the stall to its right and fell fast asleep.
Billy doesn’t know how long he had been asleep, but all at once he heard the sound of clicking and could feel the cold hard press of steel against his left temple.  He woke up in a start and could see five men with lanterns standing over him in the stall.  As his eyes started to adjust, he noticed something strange.  Three of these five men were black.

Whatcha doin here boy, and where you headed, the biggest of the three black men asked him?  Billy knew that how he was to answer that question would probably determine whether he lived through the night. I’m headed to Virginia to try and find my older brother. Our farm was burned a few weeks ago and my mother and baby sister are now living with relatives.  I need to let my brother know, so he will know where to find us when the war is over.
I think this here boy’s fixin to join up with the Rebs, another of the black men shouted out.  Tell the truth boy, you’re headed to Richmond to sign up with old Jeff Davis ain’t you?  Billy lied and said he wasn’t sure of which side to fight for and that he had a brother fighting for each.  With that, the biggest of the three sat him on a barrel in the corner and began to talk again …
What you done tonight boy is decide to camp in a rural spot of the Underground Railroad.  You know what that is boy?  We have a real problem now because you knows where it’s at.  We can’t trust that you won’t tell nobody else and ruin other’s chances to get North and be free.  Billy just stared into the man’s face.  He had a strength mixed with kindness behind his eyes and for a reason Billy couldn’t understand, he felt safe in this man’s presence.

Son, we is makin our way over to Preston on the western shore where we catches a train to the North.  We have one more stop before there and that’s at the Hawkins place just thirty miles up the road.  Billy then knew why the stalls back at Martha’s barn had looked slept in.  He still wondered why the sign at the farm entrance had said Billett instead of Hawkins.  The black man then said: My names Lester, and those two men over there are brothers named Rayford and Link.  By now, the two white men were gone and only the four of them were left in the stall.

Since you say you haven’t made your mind up yet about which side to join, let me help you a little with your choosin.  Lester then went on to tell Billy that Rayford and Link had five other brothers and two sisters that were all killed while trying to escape to the North.  Not only were they killed, but they were tortured before being hanged just outside of Columbia South Carolina.  Lester then asked Rayford and Link to remove their shirts.  As they did, Lester took his lantern and shined it over both of their backs.  Both were totally covered with scars from the several lashings they had received on the plantation where they had worked back in South Carolina.  Lester said this was not unusual, and no man should be treated that way.  This was worse treatment than the slave owner would ever do to any of his animals.

Lester then said again: It’ll be a shame to have to **** you boy, but for the better good of all involved, I’ll do what I gots to do. With that, the three men walked outside, and Billy could hear them talking in hushed tones for what seemed like an hour.  Lester walked back inside alone and said: What’s your name son?  We’ve decided we're taking you with us up the road a piece.  You might come in handy if we need a hostage or someone with local knowledge of the area as we make our way t’wards Preston. Go back to sleep and we’ll wake you in an hour when it’s time to go.

Billy couldn’t sleep. It had been a long day of interrogation and darkness was again approaching.  He heard the men talking outside and from what they were saying, he realized they did all of their traveling at night hiding out in small barns and shacks like this during the light of day. He wondered now if he’d ever see home again.  He wondered even more about his previous decision to fight for the South.

In an hour, Lester came in and asked Billy if that was his horse in the stall next to him.  Billy said it was and Lester said: Get him outside, we’re going to load him with the chillens and then be on our way.  When Billy walked outside he saw eight other black people in addition to the three he had previously met.  It was a mother and father and five children all aged between three and eleven.  Lester hoisted the three smallest children up on George’s back, as the other two lined up to walk alongside.  They would make sure that none of the younger ones fell off as they maneuvered their way North through the trees at night.  The mother and father walked quietly behind, as the three large black men led the way with Link scouting up ahead for anything unforeseen.

Just before dawn, Billy recognized where they were.  They were at the end of that farm road he had just come down the day before, but the sign now read in faded letters Hawkins.  Billy looked back at the sign and he could see something written on the back.  As he squinted into the approaching sun, he could see the letters B-I-L-L-E-T-T written of the back of the board.  Billy was now more confused than ever.  Lester told them all to wait in the trees to the left of the farm road, as he took out three small rocks from his pants pocket. The sun was almost up and this was the most dangerous part of their day.

He approached the house slowly and threw the first stone onto the front porch roof — then followed by the second and then the third.  Without any lights being lit, the front door opened and Lester walked inside.  In less than a minute, he was back in the trees and said:  It now OK fo us to makes our way to the barn, where we’s gonna hide for the day.

After they were settled in the five empty stalls, Lester decided who would then take the first watch.  He needed to have two people on watch, one looking outside for approaching strangers and one watching Billy so he wouldn’t try to escape.  What Lester didn’t know was that Billy wasn’t sure he wanted to go anywhere right now and was starting to feel like he was more part of what was going on than any hostage or prisoner.

In another hour, Martha came in with two big baskets of food: Oh I see you have found my young friend Billy, I didn’t know that he worked for the road.  Lester told Martha that he didn’t, and he was still not sure of what to do with him.  Martha just looked down at Billy and smiled. I’m sure you’ll know the right thing to do Lester, and then she walked back outside toward the house. Lester told Billy that Martha was a staple on the Road to Preston and that without her, hundreds, maybe thousands of black slaves would now be dead between Virginia and Delaware.  He then told Billy that Martha was a widow, and both her husband and two sons had been killed recently at the Battle of Bull Run.  They had fought on the Confederate side, but Martha still had never agreed with slavery.  Her husband and sons hadn’t either, but they sympathized with everything else that the South was trying to do.

Billy’s head felt like it wanted to explode.  Here was a woman who had lost everything at the hands of Yankee soldiers and yet was still trying to help runaway slaves achieve freedom as they worked their way through Maryland.  Billy wanted to talk to Martha.  He also wondered who that man was in the field the previous morning when he had stopped to introduce himself.  He was sure at the time it had been Martha’s husband, but now Lester had just said that she was a widow. More than anything though, Billy wanted to talk to Martha!

Billy asked Lester when he returned from his watch if he could go see Martha inside the house.  Lester said: What fer boy, you’s be better off jus sittin quietly in this here barn. Billy told Lester that if he mentioned to Martha that he wanted to see her, he was sure she would know why and then agree to talk with him.  Lester said: I’ll think on it boy, now go get ya some sleep.  Oh by the way, did you get somethin to eat?  Matha’s biscuits are the best you’ll ever taste.  Billy said, Yes, and then tried to lie down and go to sleep.  His mind stayed restless though and he knew deep in his heart, and in a way he couldn’t explain, that Martha held the answer he was desperately in need of.

In about two more hours Martha returned with more food.  She wanted to dispense it among the children first, but three were still sleeping so she wrapped theirs and put it beside them where they lay.  After feeding the adults, she walked over to Billy and said: Would you help me carry the baskets back up to the house? Billy looked at Lester and he just nodded his head.  On the way back to the house Martha said: I understand you want to talk to me. I knew I should have talked with you before, but you were in such a hurry we never got the chance.  Let’s go inside and sit down while I prepare the final meal.

Martha then explained to Billy that she had been raised in Philadelphia.  She had met her husband while on a trip to Baltimore one summer to visit relatives.  Her husband had been working on a fishing boat docked in Londontown just south of Baltimore.  It was love at first sight, and they were married within three weeks.  Martha had only been back to Philadelphia twice since then to attend the funerals of both of her parents.  She then told Billy what a tragedy this new war was on the face of America … with brother fighting brother, and in some cases, fathers fighting their own sons. It not only divides us as a nation, but divides thousands of families, especially those along the Mason-Dixon line where our farm is located now.

She also told Billy her name was Billett, but they used Hawkins at night as the name of her Railway Stop along the Road. Hawkins was Martha’s maiden name and to her knowledge was not well known in these parts. Hawkins was also the name distributed throughout the South to runaway slaves who were trying to make their way North. Martha felt that if they were looking for someone in her area named Hawkins, they would have a hard time tracing it back to her.  The Courthouse that she and her husband had been married in burned down over fifteen years ago and all records of births, deaths, and marriages, had been consumed by that fire.

By reversing the sign at night to Hawkins, it allowed the runaway slaves to find her in the darkness while protecting her identity in the event that they were caught.  Under questioning, they might give up the name Hawkins while having no knowledge of the name Billett which in these parts was well known. Martha also told Billy that she had nothing left to lose now except her dignity and pride.  Her two sons and husband had been taken at Bull Run and now all she wanted was for the war to end and for those living imprisoned in slavery to be set free and released. Her dignity and pride forced her to try and do everything she could to help.

When Billy asked Martha … How did you know the right thing to do? she said: The right thing is already planted there deep inside you.  All that’s required is for you to be totally honest with yourself to know the answer.  Martha then turned back to her cooking.

Lester then walked into the kitchen and said: Martha Ma’m, what’s we gonna do wit dis boy?  Martha only looked at Billy and smiled as she said, Lester, this boy’s gonna do just fine.  Lester then looked at Billy and said: Somethin you wanta say to me son? Billy asked if he could go feed his horse and then come back in a few minutes.  Lester said that he could but not to take too long.

When Billy walked back into the barn, George was tied to a wall cleat in the far left corner.  He walked him out to the water trough in the dark and then back inside where he gave him another half- bucket of oats.  He looked in George’s eyes for that surety that George always had about him.  Just as he started to look away, George ****** up his head and looked to his left.  The youngest of the black children was walking toward George with something in her hand.  She was with her older sister, and she was carrying an apple — an apple for George. George took the apple from her hand as he nudged the side of her face with his nose.  Billy looked at the scene, and, in the moment’s revelation, knew instantly the right thing for him to do.

Billy went back inside where Lester and Martha were drinking coffee by the fire.  Billy told Lester that NOBODY knew these backwaters like he and his brothers. He also told Lester that by joining his cause he would never be faced with the possibility of meeting either of his brothers on the field of battle.  This seemed to strike a nerve with Lester who had a brother of his own fighting for the south somewhere in Louisiana.  In Louisiana, many of the black’s were free men and fought under General Nathan Bedford Forrest where they would comport themselves with honor and bravery throughout the entire war.

Billy then told Lester he had never agreed with slavery, and his father had always refused to own them.  This made the work harder on he and his brothers, and some of their neighbors ostracized them for their choice.  Billy said his father didn’t care and told him many times that … No man should ever own another or Lord over him and be able to tell him what he can or cannot do.

Lester then asked Billy what he knew about these backwaters.  Billy said he knew every creek and tributary along the Patuxent River and all the easiest places to get across and get across safely where no one could see.  Lester said they had a friendly ferry across the bay to Taylors Island, but many times the hardest part was getting across the Patuxent to where they were now.  From here, they would then decide whether to go across the bay to Preston or head further North to other friendly stops along the Road to Delaware. Billy said he would be most helpful along those stops further North and on this Western side of the bay as he knew the terrain so well.

For four more years Billy worked out of Martha’s farm hiding and transporting runaway slaves on their way North.  He would make occasional trips back to Bowie to fortify the barn that the Union soldiers had not burned when they torched his house that day.  His family’s barn would become the main Railroad Stop before taking those last steps to freedom that lay just 100 miles beyond in the free state of Delaware.

After reconstruction, Billy went on to become a lawyer and then a judge in Calvert County Maryland.  Martha had left Billy the farm in her will, and he now used it as a haven for black people who were freely emigrating from the south and needed a place to stay and rest before continuing on to the Industrial cities of the northeast.

When Martha was dying, Billy asked her who that mysterious farmer was that was out tending her field that morning when he first stopped by so many years ago? Martha said:Why don’t you know; that was my father, Ethan Hawkins. He worked that field every day since my husband and two boys were killed.  I’m surprised he let you see him.  I thought I was the only one who ever knew he was there.  But, but, but, your father died many years ago I thought.  Martha looked at Billy with those beautiful and gentle eyes and just smiled …

Seeing him that day had changed Billy and the direction
of his life forever, making what seemed like King
Solomon’s choice — the right and only one for him.


Kurt Philip Behm

serve your bullet on the platters
along with the silver spoons and
doomed matters. we don't deserve other
than the dust of our creation.

that's what we are, we beget
ourselves and are not patient
we are our creation,
we are not the scrolls in our town
halls but the clay molded by our hands
and the soccer *****. out in the street,
not stopping other than by abrupt
stamping of your cleat.

the cost of cost may be a
long lost generation, when you spew nukes in a foreign invasion-
we bare our friends corpses and
drag them through the nation,
it’s true the wrong place for
skeletons is the basement.

Cherry pits and Goodtime while I avoided your frame
Christopherson carrying us quietly... or maybe it was Paul Simon
(I forget)

And I listen to your subcutaneous single-serve salvation
while you're seeing trees for their root structure
watching the AudioArbor curl and weave
with the hue of that little toy xylophone
you two found in some box in the basement
and I feel discovered all over again

I don't know how teaching me a cleat hitch
stumbled into Kant and 21st-century relationship structure
That's a path only you could manage
flanked by a witty remark about the weather or traffic or my day
skimming the depths on nothing more than Zephyr's respiration

And now I know patience was wrong
watching concentrated ambition simply... snuffed
waiting and wisting ebb as you tip-toe to oblivion

She loved the feeling of the ball at her feet,
the sound of it spinning across the turf
and tapping gently against her cleat.
She loved the feeling of adrenaline rushing through her body,
a smile on her face
as the ball hit the back of the net.
She loved the feeling of the wind on her face,
her feet barely touching the turf
as she flew down the field.
She loved it,
she loved it,
she loved it.
Every little thing made her heart pound
and her eyes sparkle.
Energy coursed through her body.
When she stepped onto that field,
it all went away.
The essay due tomorrow,
and the fights with her family at home.
Gone.
The hunt for a job,
and the decision to play in college.
Gone.
Searching for herself,
and her relationship with the one true king.
Gone.
Everything that mattered blew away in the chilly wind
when she laced up her cleats and grabbed her ball.
Everything that defined her,
all the labels and the numbers and the names,
became a distant memory as she stepped into a new world
and became someone else.
Strong.
Quick.
Powerful.
Courageous.
Unstoppable.
A warrior,
in love with the game.

concerning yours truly
poor righteous leftist sole.

Attempting nightly ritual
nsync with sole and
instep of beat
January second 11:33
two thousand twenty two
footwear equipped with
custom made cleat
proudly standing tall
(think) as an elite
able, eager, and ready
to sprint skyhigh fleet
ting into netherlands
(towering well over
other wiry contestants,
hence exception to

maximum height waved
outrageous illegitimate forfeit
chore blithely Atlas shrugged off),
the fountain head
whereby marathoner Olympian
amidst godly pantheon did greet,
then melted starter blocks
competitors crouched tigerlike
deftly gunning generating barreling heat
fast as greased lightning
Achilles catapulted courtesy blur,
zee mister (oak kay)
tree - man, i.e. helpmeet,
he roundly squared off
accompanied by his wifely entreat
for sakes Pete.

Thus situated, positioned, and finagled
husbandry duty obliging the misses,
no matter she kick started
(think thrashing outsize toddler)
childish task deemed
markedly cockameemie design,
subsequently these little feet (mine)
stood stolid upon bedroom floor
she did man date me,

supplicating, necessitating,
imploring, and decrying divine
intercession, cuz thee mademoiselle
did authoritatively assign,
thee mister getting mine
handy dandy grip upon her supine
corpulent physique
outstretched leaden legs
awaiting (the missus)

salute perfect sign
to commence powerfully
prying and pulling
first straight then nine
tee degrees practically pulling
footloose and eventually
detaching fancy free
thunder thighs, what strong
amazing anatomical design

nearly defying might
of super rich a$$ a nein
bird brainer heron
an ill eagle cro-magnon scheme
to untie clodhoppers
snug as a bug in a rug,
whence laces unknotted free
and clear whirled,
wide webbed formerly tangled skein
fo shoe more intolerable
than swallowing quinine.

When I was a wee lad my
parents took us to Baltimore
Harbour in West Cork Ireland
for a day out away from the
mundanety of Mallow.

While we were standing at the
pier, there was a fishing boat
alongside, bobbing against the
attached Dunlop's ™ and dock-
-lined to a mooring cleat.

My father, who knew a lot about
boats and indeed the sea, remarked,
that it was high tied, my dyslexia
had not been diagnosed at the time,
therefore, I was not aware of the water.

(sung – in a round ***** willow warble - to the tune of --
Oh Where Oh Where has my little dog gone).

Once pronounced libido of mine
took kamikaze nose dive,
whereby about two thirds of mein kampf ago,
I yearned to be sought after beaux
yet as severely socially
anxious and withdrawn lad
present day ofttimes repeated laments
find me to crow
slamming self NOT losing
my virginity at a precocious ago,
cursing lack of tangible results courtesy

feeble attempts delivered deathblow
to a fragile ego,
and now only
as a married celibate sexagenarian
dearth of rutting thoughts
along the unforgettable lines sketched out
by storied author Eugene O'Neill  
includes lustful and romantic desire,
largely illustrated by the relationship
between Eben and Abbie

hashtagged within tragedy
Desire Under the Elms
ricochets with salient significance
an attempt by O'Neill
to adapt plot elements
and themes of Greek tragedy
to a rural New England setting
inspired by the myth of Phaedra,
Hippolytus, and Theseus,
which story of five characters
on a rural farm

in 1850s' New England,  
how their lives  
both pushed together
and pulled apart
by their conflicting desires
such aboriginal, primal,
optimal, animal, et cetera characteristics
once figuratively bounces
hither and yon, to and fro
within testosterone
powered windmills in my mind.

With a flame boy hunt
deft jais nais sais quois
firm lickey split tongue
and two bell yule yar pissant
little nippy ***** noopy ruck berry
filled up paul ling sacks
viz peppy la pew doth not peter out,
and weathers clawed rained swipes
from hello kitty when faux pas gets swung
assisting climbing Jacob's ladder

(without ***** footing,
orb bing a putz like the president)
advancing quick to attain ******* rung
while heading into a slippery sloping sluice
(with prickly endeavor emitting cleat trill
smooth sailing along a ****
re coarse upon ******* shaped pung
crossing la brea tar pits (peppered
with lai bee ha tricky
bridge over the River Kwai)

comprising ideal place de la resistance
to woo tang clan foreign nee Kate,
where two puckered
rill lee fleshy ruffling rills
tinged pinkish lips overhung
a challenging escarpment,
where many a brave
Tom, Harry or **** get hung
up, particularly while searching
for fabled “G” spot,

Fear of Flying (a bildungsroman
whose central theme couched
in the search
for self-discovery) by Erica Jung
cuz portcullis hamstrung
even the most fiercely determined
Engelbert **** per ****
necessitating the moist risky ski maneuver
as most studs know tubby gelandesprung

though ***** prize
wool worth any slimy setbacks,
where sticky **** gets flung
from angry cat,
who does not in the least find amusing,
and if further pricked with rage
not averse to hurl dung
gar (with) ease at snaky,
retractable hardened foo fighting

beastie boy twill clung
for dear life and limb
(er, or twig and berries),
while applying crampons (bivouacked
within his maxipad), viz ****
gull low, essentially a ball peen size cove
******* and hammered out
by Dashiell Hammitt, where coiled,
kinked follicles strewn tightly inlet among
pheromone laced verboten fruit.