Betweens

This poem was written in response to a Poets & Writers 7/21/17 prompt to look at a photograph from a recent trip and write a poem that "explores the distance between your current self and the photograph, and between an image and a feeling or memory." I visited my birthplace town and home for twenty-one years, Elgin, Illinois in May of this year, taking photos of my first home and my dad's sister's home.  It is dedicated to Linda Sjurset Esposito, who lived across the street from me in Elgin, Illinois.  Her birthday is today 8/29/17.

My first Fonte-Dice home on Melrose, Ave., Elgin, Illnois.  It is a Sears & Roebuck Craftsman house.

Sjurset-Fonte home on Melrose Ave., Elgin, Illinois

My home on Melrose Avenue,

almost two thousand miles away

and sixty-two years ago--

I remember mom, 

standing over the porcelain kitchen sink, 

straining red berry juice through white cheesecloth.

She is to busy too play with me,

so I wander outside,

dragging my Buster Brown shoes

over the newly-mowed grass,

up to the border 

of the street-forbidden-to-cross.

I gaze longingly

at the black asphalt

and spy my cousin sitting on the steps 

in front of her house.

We wave at each other, 

our late summer smiles

bridging the boundaries

between us.

Solitude

Sunset Crater, July, 2018, photo by Anita C. Fonte

At evening, the distant lowing of some cows on the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious….  Walden, Henry David Thoreau, p. 87.

What is such solitude to me?  When and where do I experience it? How does solitude help or hurt me?—These are questions that a Poets & Writers prompt from March, 2017 poses and it has taken me four months to go back to this section and compose my responses to it.  Just lately, in honor of Thoreau’s 200^th birthday, I pulled out my Signet Classic edition (probably from college 1967-71 since the cost of the book was fifty cents and there is no publishing date listed), and began reading it a few paragraphs at night before I go to bed.

His time is not my time.  He rallies against trains and not cell phones.  For me, the culprit of my “noise” is television where the daily dramas of Trumpland as reported on CNN or MSNBC becomes a Greek chorus as I do online tasks.  I do turn it off for “writing” and/or escape to my local Starbucks where, in the past, I could expect a decent degree of solitude.  But, as I write this, there is one heavy haired female who ignores my annoyed glances and talks on her cellphone as if this were her private office!  This kind of partial solitude is unhealthy for me and it’s becoming so common at cafés that I have been thinking of what else can I do to find/create solitude?

In the distant past, which I recall in the quote above, I experienced quietude and solitude at my Grandparents’ farm on Randall Road.  They didn’t raise cows, but their neighbor did, and the black and white Angus breed would linger by the wire fence, chewing their grass and plopping their cow pies on the picked ground.  Sometimes I would hang in the branch of an oak tree, or lie on the soft hill and chew on a blade of wild wheat.  I was content—a feeling I rarely have in my sixth decade.  I do not often experience contentment to that depth.  

Of course, my memory may be faulty.  Maybe, even then, I was anxious about school (probably) or fearful about what mood my dad would be in when he picked me up from my grandparents.  My dad might have been bipolar, and definitely had Italian son-of-an alcoholic behaviors plus WWII PTSD, so life was daily drama with him at home.  My maternal grandparents who had the farm, were Cherokee, Scots-Irish, German and stoical Methodists.  My mom was much like them.  And there was a part of her girlish charm that couldn’t cope with my dad’s complexities.  So that farm was my refuge and the symbol of my childhood contentment and happiness.

Sometimes, living in the desert, looking at the night sky, I experience moments of bliss, thinking about how the sky is bigger than I can see: a great “out there” that holds mystery and magic.  And the mountains are places where I can sometimes escape to feel similar moments.  But I am usually with someone, not alone, so solitude isn’t part of that kind of escape.  When I go to the Botanical Gardens, I am often alone and I feel safe.  

Aha! Now there’s a place where I can cultivate more healthful solitude. And when I read a good story I am into a transitory solitude; that kind of aloneness inspires me to write or convinces me it is futile to write at all. It depends on the mood I am in going into the story.  How can I encourage myself to be more “in the mood” of being inspired and not discouraged?  Maybe, before I read, I can pause and make the intention to be open to inspiration.

So what just happened as I write this?  Either the noise around me drowned out the annoying talker behind me (she still is gabbing), or, for just a few lines, I was lost in the flow.  So a small miracle can happen, even among the noise. 7.27.17e the intention to be iin more " Either the noise around me drowned out the annoyiomeone, not alone, so solitude isn'

Erasure Poem: Bottles, Twigs, Cans and a Piano

I try to (occasionally) practice the erasure poem genre as described and demonstrated by Austin Kleon in his book Steal like an Artist.   Here is my latest, prompted by an article in the New York Times, "Bottles, Twigs and Trash Cans (and Mozart)", by Anthony Tommasini, Music Review  8.5.17

It was an unusual sight, 
the Hall crammed with a motley assortment
of corked wine bottles, four gleaming trash cans
and small piles of twigs.

The members began to snap the twigs
and dump them on the floor.

Later, 
stretching of jumping rhythms
played by tapping
on a coffee table
as well as the outside
and inside
of a piano.

Storied Visit to Elgin, Illinois

May, 2017

Once upon a time on Randall Road in northern Illinois, there were farms.  Many farms.  Many farms with fields touching, boundaried by oak trees and creeks.  In one field, black and white cows strolled, dropping their faces to nudge the green grass.  In another field, children climbed trees, ran through a forest of wild mustard and white flowers.

In the nearby town, known for many decades as “the city of churches”, the river hills included a synagogue and Mason’s Hall.  In the downtown, two major department stores, locally owned banks and restaurants, two theaters, a YMCA and YWCA, and a public library formed the safe circles of friendship for the town’s adults and younger members.

For those growing up in the town, summer morning music or academic programs at the junior high and high school were followed by afternoons of swimming at a public park pool.  At the same park in the evenings, twice a week, music concerts beckoned families and romancing couples to lie on blankets and study the stars or gather fireflies in glass jars.  Also on summer nights, before air-conditioning would entice them to watch television inside, families ended the evenings with a visit to Dairy Queen or A&W, momentarily freezing their memories.  Winters brought dark days and storms with weekends of ice skating by the white pavilion in the second public park, hot cocoa and marsh mellows served by Methodist ladies in woolen coats and mufflers. On particular occasions, the white pavilion, its stained glass windows gleaming like colored silk, welcomed little girls who pointed their toes on the wooden floor and swirled in pink and blue tutus made of netting.

While the farms flourished, so did the town.  But in the rooms of commerce, engineers planned and later built a widened Randall Road that tore down the farmhouses, barns, and silos and buried the lives of the farmers and their families.  The children grew, partied, kissed and some lost their innocence in the back seat of their parents’ cars.  Others maintained an intricate balance of studiousness and shyness through adolescence to high school graduation.

Upon graduation, the children’s waters parted.  The built road became a commercial corridor dotted with chain stores, soulless centers of merchandise.  Perhaps as a counterbalance, windowless mega churches arose with concrete parking lots and thin borders of bushes.

Time passes....

Fifty years later, a few of those children--now carrying stories of retirement, grandchildren, and spouses’ deaths gather in a backyard that was once a farm field.  Here the ghosts of the Fox and Sauk Tribes linger with the ghosts of white settlers and farmers.  Now, the ghosts rise up in the late afternoon shadows and touch the shoulders of the grown children.  A windmill in the yard twirls in the breeze as a recognition of time turns down the smiles of those who were once entwined like leaves of morning glory vines.

  

SLim's story Part 3.

SLim’s story continues 6.17

In the few months after SLim reunited with George (the boy who partially tamed him), both had been in new adventures, sometimes together, sometimes on separate occasions.

Together, they roamed the desert, settling in on warm afternoons at the corner convenience store and sharing a Thrifty ice cream cone.  George licked the ice cream down to the cone and then SLim chomped on the remains.

“You like the bottom end, don’t you, fella.  Works good for both of us since I like the top.”  George brushed the dust from his over-the-ankles pants he inherited from his older brother, Tom.  “Looks like it’s time for us to head on home since I have homework to do before I can play baseball.”

SLim heard the word “ball” and his ears perked up.  He liked certain kinds of balls: cheese balls scattered across the park grass were his favorite.  He trotted after George, keeping his eyes open for rabbits and birds.  Not very hungry, the glances were mostly just for practice. 

“Life’s pretty cheery right now with George, but I know the happy days can’t be counted on,” SLim reflected as he spotted a young quail under a mesquite bush.  “Huh, that young ‘un ain’t goin’ to last long if he doesn’t know enough to scatter when I come by.”

So that’s how the days often passed as they two hung out together.  On their own was another story.

George tore his paints on barbed wire as he and his best friend, Charlie, chased bats from under the arroyo bridge.  For that he got a few hits on his bottom from his stepdad, Marty.  George didn’t like Marty much and the feeling was mutual.

SLim tore a toenail trying to scrape the dry skin of a tomato off a park bench.  He also was chased by a man on a golf cart and had to hide behind a bush near the zoo.  SLim heard a lion roar and his scrawny legs trembled.  Not much scared SLim, but the sound of a big cat did. Bobcats could be a mean adversary and mountain lions, well, SLim stayed scarce from their territory.

For now, sticking close to George’s regular meals worked pretty well.  As dusk settled in, George came out of the house and squeezed a couple of handfuls of dinner leftovers through the backyard fence.  SLim watched George sit down on the dirt and wait for SLim to come out of the high grasses.  Together, they enjoyed the moonlight and stars and imagined another day of adventures.

Two poems written at Rincon Market plus one

These are in the format of a "tricube": 3 syllables, 3 lines, 3 stanzas.  Thanks to Writer's Digest 9/2016.

Two Poems written 4.28.17 (while the Sawmill Fire burns SE of Tucson)
1.
The cookie
crumbles is
the saying.

It means life
falls into
parts, not whole.

So live it
in moments
not decades.

2.
The wind blows
ashes from
the valley

Where flames fly
grasses burn
horses run.

It is Spring:
white poppies
bend, break, burn.


Poem written 8.21.16 (late summer in Tucson)

The grey stone
rolled over
the mountain.

Silver clouds
trailing the
gentle winds

A monarch
flutters as
rain ripples.

Reckoning

This poem was written in response to the March/April Writer's Digest Poetic Asides description by Robert Lee Brewer for the poetic form:  dizain.  The form requires 10 lines, with 8-10 syllables the rhyme scheme of ababbccdcd.  This was fun for me to do and I was surprised by the message that emerged, as indicated in the title of the poem.

It was Easter morning at my house
Neighbors bringing berries and wine,
Our gray cat sleeping like a mouse.
He is imagining the first time
He tries to catch one on a day so fine
As this--when the sun shines, church bells ring.
I put aside what tomorrow will bring:
More of the same or a fanfare of fear?
When will the rocks begin to sing?
When will the mad crowds begin to cheer?