Spring, Night

April, it’s late to be out, near midnight,

            Nearly first-quarter moon settling into

Layers of gauzy filigree stratocirrus clouds,

            Into the boughs of deodar cedar,

Cold slap of breeze blows from the west,

            From the sea, over the coastal mountains,

And the lights lit across the valley haze,

            The fecund scent of agriculture mixed with

All the blossoms exploding in early spring,

            And the silence,

I ache at the beauty of it,

            Ache at how little of it matters at all,

Half a world away missiles are falling,

            Innocents dying,

                        In a world at war,

We are being led by warlike men,

            We are being led down this final path

By warlike men.

            We are

Being led

            To our own, entirely mutual

Destruction

By

Warlike men.

04/14/24

Summer Solstice

Seeing that crescent, waxing, easing into

            Open arms of deodar, stretching, ready to receive-

The last smudged ash of sunset darkening into gauze

            Of valley mist and distant shadows of Coastal Range-

The longest day of the year slowly, so

Slowly, surrenders to darkness.

Lights dancing out on the highway, twenty-two, wending

            West, into the foothills and through to the coast,

The bear overhead points to Polaris, the anchor,

            Just to the left of the tip of the largest fir,

The neighborhood quiet, no one moving, ten-thirty,

            Twilight disappearing,

Astonished at the magnificence, the grandeur, of this

            World we’ve remaining, and I with naught but words,

That cannot bring the heartbreaking beauty to life,

            Cannot convey the chill, fecund scent after two-days rain,

Wet cedar, fields of hay, and flower, and forests of fir,

Astonished, still, at it all,

            How many more springs? How many more perfect evenings?

I am not a prisoner of my past,

            Not only can we choose to move forward, progress, we must,

Even to maintain a modicum of accountability, at this late hour,

            To the world we leave behind.

Jupiter drops behind the mountains,

            A whisper of a crescent sets into murky bloodorange haze,

The bear dances around the north star,

            A puff of a cool breeze from the ocean, waves across the valley,

The sky is void of portent for tonight,

            Just for tonight.

The poem “Cooking Out: Winter in Oregon” was accepted for publication by Cirque, A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim. As a winner of their recent contest, “Poems of Place”, there will be a zoom reading on July 6th at 8:00 PM Pacific time.

There will also be live readings in Oregon- August 13th at Tsunami Books in Eugene, and August 15th at the Ross Island Cafe in Portland.

06172023

Father

He was born and raised in North Hampton, New Hampshire. His father, Samuel Parsons Garland Sr. took his own life at the age of eighty-six rather than be confined to a nursing home to die. His mother, Ida Tarr Garland, died a few years after the war. We never met. He rarely talked of her, though he was still engaged with the Tarr family, Rockport, MA, into the seventies.

He joined the Navy in 1941, after Pearl Harbor. He became part of the SeaBees, the construction battalion, and spent the war in the South Pacific. I had banners in my room when I was growing up, mementos of the islands he had been to. Palau. New Caledonia. Hebrides, and on.

He married my mother after the war and they set about building a big family, eight kids in all. He worked as a bartender for a while. He was a bartender when I was born. Story is, he worked the night I was born, and everybody kept buying him drinks. He smashed into a parked car on his way home. Been in trouble if my uncle wasn’t a town cop.

He worked as a lineman, running electrical wires in New England. He’d leave the house early in the morning, five or so. I vowed I’d never work a job where I’d have to leave so early. I had a job when I had to leave that early.

He’d get home from work at five. My mother would have dinner ready for him when he arrived. After he’d fall into his chair and watch the news. Cronkite or Huntley / Brinkley, then whatever fare was offered by one of the three networks. He liked war shows. Combat. He’d usually fall asleep in the chair by eight-thirty. He and my mother would hold hands while they watched.

He smoked Camels. Couple of packs a day. I went to Binette’s Market umpteen times, a hot quarter in my hand. Pack of Camels, please. Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. If there wasn’t an ashtray and he was indoors, he’d flick the dead ash into the cuff of his pants as he sat and talked.

He had a series of stodgy family cars. ’52 Olds. Galaxie 500. Family sedans. One time in the mid-sixties he arrived home in a sporty little Pontiac Tempest. Light yellow. Bucket seats. My mother made him get rid of it. It was one of his bids for independence, I think. A car that wouldn’t fit the whole growing brood.

He loved the ocean. I was about eight when he got his first boat, a small aluminum skiff with a low-horse Evinrude. He was so pleased. Immediately took us younger kids and my mother and launched the boat into the Hampton River. Overloaded a little, water up to the gunwales. Mom started to panic when he turned the boat toward open sea. Sam, you turn this boat around RIGHT NOW!

He graduated to more seaworthy boats as time went by. I became his first mate on a multitude of deep-sea fishing expeditions. He knew fishing spots. He trusted the sea, and I trusted him. He never wanted to return to dock. We were caught in fog. We were caught in thunderstorms. A navy guy.

I never saw him cook, except barbecue. He taught me how to barbecue. Dogs and burgers. Relish in the middle and mustard on top.

He and mom had date nights most every Friday. They’d either go out for Chinese or fried clams. In the morning I’d find either chewy sesame candy or leftover fried onion rings, Delicious.

We never went out to a restaurant as a family. Too many of us. Too expensive. I must have been twelve or thirteen the first time we stopped at a Chinese restaurant in Wenham, MA. China Dragon. Set off a lifelong love affair with Chinese cuisine, though that afternoon I’m sure it was the basics: appetizers, Egg Foo Yung, chow Mein. Chewy sesame candies.

He would take the family on Sunday afternoon drives, at mom’s insistence. Sometimes to Kingston, where he’d found an ice cream stand on some rural back road that sold banana boats, six scoops, all the toppings, served in a blue plastic boat, for a quarter.

He read. Zane Grey. Earl Stanley Gardner. The Boston Herald, every day. He loved jazz. Kept trying to get me to appreciate Errol Garner. I was young, unconvinced. Only later did I grow to appreciate Garner’s genius. On the day I learned of dad’s death, I listened to Garner’s “Autumn Leaves” for a long time.

Another of his favorites was Glenn Miller. I’ve always liked Miller’s music too. And Ella Fitzgerald. Mom would sing scat while she cooked. He took us to the movies sometimes. Drive-ins, mostly. Double features. Once we sat through the first feature, some horror movie about a test pilot who takes his jet too high and on the return he’s somehow turned into this murderous mutant monster. I loved it. When the second feature started, Beach Blanket Bingo, we left in a hurry. He took me to the Ioka to see The Longest Day.

There was a blizzard in New England in ’69. Snowed four days. Still remember seeing pictures in the Ipswich Chronicle, snow drifts as high as the top of utility poles. I was helping him lay a new carpet in the family room, Sunday afternoon, when the first flakes fell. The phone rang and the snow started at the same time. He was gone within an hour. Didn’t see him for a week. My job was to split wood and keep the fireplace lit. No power. When the storm broke, I shoveled the car out as best I could and tried to move it, but it was hopelessly stuck. I flattened a rear tire in my attempts. I’m sure I made the situation much worse. He never said anything about it. Just thanked me. He said it was the biggest paycheck he’d ever received.

He was a social drinker. Rarely saw him with a beer. Highballs. Coffee was his quaff of choice, any time of day. Percolated. Regular. He was a congenial guy, easy with people, had friends. Had a way of teasing that was disarming, made him likeable. He could say things to people that would get someone else smacked, but he could pull it off.

He once had to pull a friend and colleague off a wire after watching him die from electrocution. He was a lineman in the days before bucket trucks, when workers had to strap on spikes and belts to climb utility poles. He was strong as an ox in his youth. After mom died in ’76, he moved to a smaller house, an old New Englander, two story, three bed. He carried on, with three daughters left at home. I was working with a publicist for the Boston Bruins, who would occasionally provide tickets for the games. He and I would go to the Garden down ninety-five in his huge Catalina.

He eventually remarried. Bought a light metallic green ’68 Camaro. First time I drove it I got my first speeding ticket, test drive with two little sisters. Thirty-seven in a twenty-five zone. I stood as his best man. Small ceremony. They sold everything and moved to the Keys. Bought a houseboat. He ran fishing charters. We lost touch. There was a family-wide resentment that he’d sold our heritage without letting us know, before we could perhaps take something to remember our mother by. I rarely spoke to him in the last years of his life.

There was also the feeling that he neglected the proper supervision of his youngest daughter, who went wild in Florida.

He rarely spoke of the war.

He liked to be busy. He liked to work. He was always remodeling this or that. New kitchen. Screen porch converted to a spare room. The houses we lived in were always too small for the family. When we moved from Exeter to Ipswich, sister Ann was left behind to live with mom’s parents. Don’t know if she ever forgave him for that. When he moved from Ipswich to Portsmouth, I was going from my sophomore to junior year. I don’t know if I ever forgave him for that. Though I did meet my future wife at Portsmouth High. I bear no grudge. It worked out. I saw him only once after his Florida move. He’d visited New Hampshire. I was living in Maine, raising my own family. Jason was two. Jen was newborn. Jason and I drove to Ed’s house in Manchester. I don’t remember any real conversation. It was a chance for him to meet his grandson. It was a sunny day. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive, one way. It was a short visit

He never talked politics. I don’t know if he ever voted. Never went to church. Called himself a “home Baptist.” His mother played organ at the North Hampton Baptist Church. He told us of one Halloween night he and his friends took all the pews from the church and arranged them on the roof. Pranks. A slant of humor passed onto his children.

He would take mom to see her parents, Water Street in Exeter, every week. Bill and Theresa Howard. Bill and Theresa would come over many Saturday nights for dinner and an evening of cards. Gin Rummy. Bill Howard was a Gin Rummy shark. Raucous, the laughter around that old maple table.

He was blond in his youth. At some point he’d broken his nose, or someone else had, and it had a slight crook in it. He had a toothy, sideways kind of smile, genuine.

Oddly, I was with my brothers when we learned of his death. Cloudy fall day. We were picking apples in an orchard behind Bill’s house. Cortlands and Macs. Ruth Ann came from the house, shouted that Sheila was on the phone. Bill came back out and told us Dad had died a couple of weeks before. Heart. No funeral. No one went to Florida. I never learned what arrangements had been made. Where he ended up. Missed him for a long time. Taught me a lot about being a man, about life.

Happy Father’s Day. Dad.

Sam (left), Phoebe, Bob Garland 1939

Entered The Poetry Box 2023 chapbook contest this afternoon (3/14).

All of it

What remains of memory, wisps of

            Smoke drifting lazily toward the ceiling, escaping

                        Out an open window at dusk,

            Red glow of sunset diminished,

                        Gloom overtaking the day.

It rained earlier as storms moved through,

                                    Thunder shaking the walls,

            But once passed the sun returned, steam

                        Rose from wet pavement, like reprieve,

                                    Like parole,

We shared a lifeguard stand and a bottle of red wine

            On Dowse’s Beach, watching

                        Moonrise over Nantucket Sound, it

            Was all so quiet, just us and the wash of waves on sand,

                        Hand in hand,

Later, when we walked over the bridge leading home,

                                    Astonished by flashing luminescence of jellyfish

                        Streaming into a saltwater bay,

            Carried along by the incoming tide,

                                    Marveling at the mysteries of life, and light,

                        Of chance, and fate.

It was a long time ago, life was long ago and

                                                Laughter ages ago, memories of

                        That simple touch,

So we pointed our car west,

                                    Exploring the American continent,

         Speeding toward sunset, toward darkness, across mountain and plain,

                                                Bound for new horizons, new memories,

Eating curry fries in a rooftop bar,

            Storms sweeping across the valley,

                                                Until driven inside by the sudden proximity

                                    Of lightning strikes, or

                        Drinking old fashions in a steakhouse in Buffalo,

                                                Or a soulful Smokey Robinson concert on Valentine’s Day

                             In a crowded Portland hall, last concert before shut-down,

Or the Youngbloods at the field house, hippies dancing at the back

                                    Of the auditorium,

            From a canoe trip trailing a bottle of Beaujolais from the stern

                                                In cold river water

To a kayak ride across a windswept pond

Or a deep-sea cruise to spot a whale, no great whites appeared,

                                                            What remains,

                                    Of a midnight swim in a pool in Albuquerque,

                                              Or Barstow, we were on the move, a lifetime ago,

What remains, the drift of lingering memories

            No one else cares about, not of a lifetime ago, the

                        Jarring juxtaposition of seeing Kubrick’s Strangelove

            At the theater on Pease Air Force Base, a new release, went

                                    With my best friend and his parents

                                                A rare treat, and drove

             Along the hangers, and the bombers, and I watched all summer

                                    Jets streaming overhead, splitting the great blue sky

                                                            With contrails, headed south, I thought,

            To blow Washington to smithereens, certainly

                                    The end, it was always going to be not exactly right,

                                                The Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis,

                                                                        Kennedy gunned down,

                                                                                    Never going to be right,

                                                            I and the world are getting older, tired,

                                                Mired in problems that look insurmountable,

                                    And mulling over memories,

                                                                        Effusive, unstoppable, persistent,

                                                            Available,

Smoke drifting to the ceiling,

                                                            Escaping through a window left ajar,

When we met, the sunlight in the hallway, the green paint of your locker,

The flowers in your eyes, you radiated, filled me with light and longing,

You smiled and a journey began,

                                                            Building a lifetime of memories, so

                               Many we share, so many we don’t,

                                                            The whisper of ancestors, path of family

                                          And history, the genetic trail that brought us here,

                                    Clinging together and trying to make sense

                                                Of a world we no longer belong to,

A country unrecognizable,

unable to grapple with a

                        Fundamental, existential threat,

endangering our children

            And grandchildren, the life of the

                        Planet itself, with so little comfort, isolate

                                    To survive, and consider what remains,

                                                            With so much taken away,

                                                Freedom was always illusion,

                                                                        Democracy a lie, ideas

                                    That didn’t hold up under scrutiny,

the fix was always in,

            Bobby was always going to be lying on the cold tiles

                        Of the pantry floor at the Ambassador, Nixon

                                    Always waiting in the wings,

                                It’s no wonder we’re ready to flush the whole thing away,

                                                            And divide what remains

                                                                        Among the survivors,

I’m finding contentment in memories,

                                       Comfort in what remains, closeness in partnership,

                                    Encouragement in love,

            The leaves have fully fallen

                        From the bigleaf maple and oak,

                                                I raked them up this morning

                                    And brought them to the curb,

                                                The air soft and damp and cool,

                                        The rains have come, incessantly cloudy days

                        Give way to moonless brooding nights,

                                    The heavy yoke of living

                              In this declining world, which showed such promise

Not too long ago, to now,

Stumbling at such a critical time,

Taking blind steps backwards, regressive

                                                                        Failure, is it fear or malice,

                             Or greed, or ignorance, unwillingness to move forward,

                                    To face our most uncertain future as a tribe

                                                            Unified, impossible,

In the darkness I recognize mortality, grateful

                        To have built memories in a world with a better perception

                                    Of future, what remains,

When we walked through the crowded streets of Montmartre

                In the sunshine, or Central Park, tulips and cherry blossom

Blooming, Harvard Square in the snow, glittering clear moments of a history

                        Shared, the simple yearning of lovers, wisps disappearing

                                    Out an open window, illusory in a world

                                                 Being torn asunder by a complicated machine,

                                                Equal parts passion and rage,

                                                            Blundering on the precipice,

Winter’s night, a cold wind from the east

            Shuttling the blistered sky, in the mountains it’ll snow,

                                                            A few months ago, nearly a year,

                 I published a book of poems, and sent one to my long-estranged

                                    Baby sister, and one of the poems was of family,

                                                            The extended family of my youth,

Grand mother and father, aunts, uncles, and cousins,

                                    Little sister was yearning for more information, and it

            Occurred to me tonight, that I’ll be of the last generation

                        To remember them, as breathing living people,

                                    Not just pictures seldom, if ever, seen

                                                In a dusty album no one ever looks at

                                                            In a box in the attic,  

The next generation won’t hear

            Bill’s laughter fill a room, or know his enjoyment of a

                        Game of croquet, that unusual side-ways stance he used

            To favor a bad back, hand on one knee, won’t know Theresa’s

                                Endless Irish stories of friends and family, her sly humor,

                                    Or dad’s father Sam, taciturn, old New England farmer,

His striking resemblance to General Douglas MacArthur, right down

                       To the wire-rimmed glasses and the smell of his corncob pipe,

Their frail memory stops here, except 

Genetic contribution, unbroken river,

So I want to tell little sister

                                    Everything I know, remember, even dimly recall,

                                                          Unimportant, really, just personal history

                                                I’m unwilling to forget, ancestors remembered,

                                                            What remains, what stays,

                        And what drifts away through an open window, into

                                    The night, on a cold wind from the east,

Diminishing, as I am diminished,

            Faded with fading memory,

                                                Lost time, friends and family evaporated

                        Into thin air,

            And all I can say is good-bye, goodbye,

                                    Gone, relieved from this chaotic world,

It serves little purpose to remain so mired

                                    In the past, even at sunset, even in winter,

                        But we are alone, and we are heartbroken,

            And living in a time when it all is slipping away, everything

                                                We’ve ever known, the truth we have lived,

                        In a descending spiral, a dying democracy at war with itself

                                                                        On a dying planet, imagine,

Our stature so diminished, our swagger so unwarranted,                             

Tonight, rain falls hard, cold, through wind-tossed firs,

                        A week before Christmas, another isolate holiday,

                               Abandoned on the west coast, dislocated, far from family

            And unable to gather anyway, huddled here in the face of it all,

                        Warm and together, a truculent dog

                                    And an ancient cat in tow, still here, still able

                                                            To love, to care, still we

                                                Can create, this world where we are,

            And a world we remember, and a world that remains

                                                            In traces of majestic moments and

                        Resplendent grandeur,

                                    But not tonight, water beading on the windows,

                                                Shadows under streetlamps, little warmth

                                    In this darkness, silence of another pandemic night,

            A notable change since the inception of pandemic,

                                    How quiet the night, even the kids have abandoned

                                                Cruising with nowhere to go,

                        All tucked into seclusion, this unlikely world,

                                           The one we were granted, the one we have ruined,

                                    Debilitated by enfeebled tyrants awash in mediocrity

              And brutality, and oblivious to the desperate feeling

                                                            Of creeping dread

                        In the night, the stain of humanity,

                                                            Intentional wrongheadedness,

                                    Where we live now,

                        Where will we live now, shit up our nest,

                                                                        With no clear path forward,

                                    I watch on in alarm,

                                            Wrapped in dismay, and clutch onto the memory

                                                            Of a better time,

                                                                        A time that isn’t now,

            All chaos and rampant ignorance and such personal and intentional

                        Disregard, going into the third year of pandemic

                                                How could I not write of it,

                                                   Of what it has cost us, of what it has caused,

But we cling to each other, the overwhelming comfort

                                                        Of our being together, against these odds,

                                                Odd bodkins, the undiminished threat

                        Of this world gone mad, this age of unreason,

                                                            With so little hope of appeasement,

            Cocooned in memory, rising to the ceiling

                                                            And escaping out a window left open,

                        Where we will always walk together arm in arm

                                         Down woody paths marveling at firs draped in mist,

                                    The scent of brine, the chill sea air, even the sound

             Of harbor seals barking from the island across the bay,

                                   Cascading tide of memory, what we have gone through

                                                                        To get here, where we are,

                        Holed up in the American west, tucked into Willamette Valley,

                                    Surrounded by strangers, without kith and kin,

                                                We rely on ourselves, even as winter passes in

                                                            Endless days of waiting,

            Waiting for it all to pass, whatever comes,

                                                Whatever waits, we are graced by

                                                            Merged memory, formed over a lifetime,

                  That matters to no one, celebrated only together, pick a memory

                       Like a rose from the garden, your dorm room in Fairchild Hall,

                                                A treacherous hike to the end of Lookout Point,

                                                            All these years drifting up to the ceiling,

                        Dear and true, easy and hard, never forgotten, all of it,

Low Tide, Yachats

Ocean lost to morning fog

            Except along the shore,

Whispering of swells

            Among rocky cliff and kelp,

A dozen pelicans cruise past

            So low their wingtips

Skim the polished surface

            Of the water.

No breeze dispels the mist,

            Air redolent with

Brine and spoiled crab,

            The air cool, always chilly

On this Pacific coast,

Gulls stand sullenly silent

On black rock ledges at water’s edge,

            Staring out to sea.

Low tide, Yachats, the stillness

            Seems a gift, however temporary. The storm

Forecast to arrive this afternoon, like

Subterranean forces gathering

Their strength, the dark rumbling

Of an unquiet world, soon the gale

And surging tide will send hurtling breakers

Smashing against the coast, shaking the very

Foundation of this house.

Morning lost to ocean fog,

            I pull my jacket tighter

And take a sip of now-cold tea

            And watch the sea, there is no demarcation

Of horizon, coastline becomes mist

            To the top of the skies, obscures

And disorients the world while we wait on the deck

            For the tempest.