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So There
-- for Penelope Highton
Da. Da. Da da.
Where is the song.
What’s wrong
with life
ever. More?
Or less –
days, nights,
these
days. What's gone
is gone forever
every time, old friend's
voice here. I want
to stay, somehow,
if I could –
if I would? Where else
to go.
The sea here's out
the window, old
switcher's house, vertical,
railroad blues, lonesome
whistle,
etc. Can you
think of Yee's Cafe
in Needles, California
opposite the train
station – can you keep
it ever
together, old buddy, talking
to yourself again?
Meantime some yuk
in Hamilton has blown
the whistle on a charming
evening I wanted
to remember otherwise –
the river there, that
afternoon, sitting,
friends, wine & chicken,
watching the world go by.
Happiness, happiness –
so simple. What's
that anger is that
competition – sad! --
when this at least
is free,
to put it mildly.
My aunt Bernice
in Nokomis,
Florida's last act,
a poem for Geo. Washington's
birthday. Do you want
to say ‘It's bad’?
In America, old sport,
we shoot first, talk later,
or just take you out to dinner.
No worries, or not
at the moment,
sitting here eating bread,
cheese, butter, white wine –
like Bolinas, ‘Whale Town,’
my home, like they say,
in America. It's one world,
it can't be another.
So the beauty,
beside me, rises,
looks now out window –
and breath keeps on breathing,
heart's pulled in
a sudden, deep, sad
longing, to want
to stay – be another
person some day,
when I grow up.
The world's somehow
forever that way
and its lovely, roily,
shifting shores, sounding now,
in my ears. My ears?
Well, what's on my head
as two skin appendages,
comes with the package,
I don't want to
argue the point.
Tomorrow
it changes, gone,
abstract, new places –
moving on. Is this
some old time weird
Odysseus trip
sans paddle – up
the endless creek?
Thinking of you,
baby, thinking
of all the things
I'd like to say and do.
Old fashioned time
it takes to be
anywhere, at all.
Moving on. Mr. Ocean,
Mr. Sky's
got the biggest blue eyes
in creation –
here comes the sun!
While we can,
let's do it, let's
have fun.
First published in Robert Creeley, Hello (Taylors Mistake: Hawk Press, 1976) by Alan Loney.
©Robert Creeley
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