Duck and Cover

The tense days of the Cuban Missle crisis
Brought us grade school "duck and cover" lessons.
Intimidating sessions; a shrieking alarm,
Bewilderment, panic, then stern orders
From a teacher whose fearful skyward gaze
Frightened us more than the air raid siren,
To "huddle under your desks." 

On the floor, heads bowed, arms around our faces,
We became fetuses again, cowering
Beneath the work benches of our instruction
That we hoped would become our means of salvation
If missles sowed terror, mushroom clouds bloomed,
Then spread their lethal pollen across the land.

The same questionable lessons of survival
Led to Civil Defense Directors; neighbors
With political clout suddenly given a hard hat
With a triangle decal on it, and some semblance
Of authority in a crisis should one ever arise.
They'd be goose-stepping through the aftermath
Of  apocalypse to assure us that "everything's fine,"
And that the flag of the "home of the brave" would still
Proudly wave over the smoldering devastation.

Bomb shelters suddenly became the rage.
You owed it to your loved ones to construct one.
A windowless concrete cubicle soon squatted
In your basement.  "Duck and Cover" family style.
There'd be a string attached to one electric bulb,
A few jugs of water, some packages of K-rations,
Expired Army surplus from Korea, or maybe
V-J day, the war that we won.  There'd be a Bible,
 Some paperbacks, a medicine kit, a Swiss army knife,
A box of rags, old coats, some sleeping bags
And a rifle and some ammo in a locked box.

"It's nice to know it's there," my neighbor would say.
Eventually it wasn't.  Eventullly it became a blemish,
An embarrassment, prompting feelings and fears
Better left suppressed.  Soon relegated
To gathering cobwebs and the detirius of families.
The shelters I know of now serve as root cellars.
Jars of canned raspberrys, peaches, pickles
And homemade salsa jostle for room upon shelves
With Christmas, Halloween and Easter decorations,

Mankind's capacity for destruction has progressed
To where 'duck and cover" won't protect us anymore.
Now we just pray that the unthinkable won't happen.
We've painted over the conctrete bricks of our shelters,
Found other uses for them and moved on with our lives.

Dream-Pedlary

Yes, they do have dreams to buy.
I purchased another one today.
Yeah, I realize that lottery tickets
Are the opiate of the unfufilled,
The 401K of rural white rednecks
Too lazy to set up a meth lab,
Just another tax set up by legislators
Who ought to protect us from such scams,
But this two dollar piece of paper
Gives credence to my fantasies.
It's hope that one can actually hold onto,
Something tangible, a wand one can use
To conjure forth images of wealth.

"You can't dream if you don't play."

I've lived an unhealthy share of my life
In the nebulous world of dreams.
No, not the Theatre of the Absurd
That pervades consciousness during sleep,
Those sickly excretions of the bizarre
That too often twist into something frightening,
Like writhing snakes, their coils
Wrapping tighter around me until I wake,
Gripped by fear, gasping for breath.
No, these are nightmares, not dreams.

No, the dreams this ticket buys for me
Sustain a myriad of visions.  Yeah, I know
That winning a lottery is as likely to happen
To me as Staci Keibler walking up
And whispering "I've always wanted you,
Big guy.  To hell with George Clooney."
It's as likely as electing an honest politician,
Discovering the elusive Fountain of Youth
Or bringing a peace accord to the Middle East.
Still, this ticket will fuel my dreams.

I see myself paying off our son's college loans,
Relocating to a region of my choice, such as
History rich and beautiful Vermont or Virginia,
Buying my wife and me a home in the country
Along a little stream just wide enough to plunk
Pebbles into as we sit idly upon its bank,
My mind weaving nets to catch new reveries.
I see a rare book store, I'm perusing a volume
Of " Death's Jest Book" signed by Beddoes
That the owner has set aside for me.  I read.
I write.  I've finally time to shape my thoughts
Images and experiences into poems and tales.

Yeah, you can say that I'm wasting my money,
But a couple bucks is a cheap price for daydreams.
Your dreams don't have a prayer of coming true
If you scorn them and refuse to pay.

"You can't dream if you don't play."

Holding on to Beauty

It had been a drag-ass day at the law firm,

But it was Friday; the hang up your coat,
Kick back for the weekend goal day.
The baby-sitter had left supper in the oven.
It was time to look in on her five year old son
And invite him to sit down and dine with her.

 When she opened up the door to his room

She gazed upon a world in bloom.

 “Maria helped me gather them,” he boasted proudly,

“But it was all my idea.  I’m gonna have
The most beautiful room in the whole world.”

 Black-eyed Susans peered up from a teddy bear’s lap,

Daisies were arrayed in neat rows on the floor,
Buttercups filled the bed of a red Tonka truck,
With more in his toy box, some taped to the door.
Blue coneflowers waved from an open drawer;
He’d placed wood sorrel on the windowsill.
Atop the desk he liked to sit and read in
Were wild lupine, plucked from a nearby hill.
St. Anne’s lace huddled with wild geranium;
He’d gathered dandelions and didn’t think it odd
To mate them with harebell in another pile, just as
Sweet William from the meadow lay with goldenrod.

 “I would have picked some of your roses, too, Mom,

But Maria wouldn’t let me touch them.”

 “Your room is very beautiful,” his mother agreed,

Thinking to herself of the terrible mess
Of wilted leaves, brittle stems and dropped petals
That Maria would soon have to clean up.

 Indeed, by Sunday evening the leaves had wilted,

The flowers, their colors already less vibrant,
Were petulantly weeping their petals.
The young boy was disconsolate with grief.

 “My flowers are dying,” he tearfully sobbed.

“I’d wanted them to stay with me all winter.”

 His mother put her arms around him

Protectively, wishing that she could shield him
From all the hurt that he’d ever encounter in life.
She wished that she knew how to frame her words
To reach out to console him, to touch him now,
Before his awestruck wonder pales to blasé;
Before the poety of flowers  no longer moves him.

 “When Spring parades its colors,” she finally began,

“Everything’s lovely.  But beauty that’s living
Will always fade.  You can’t grab hold of it
To save it in a cupboard for a rainy day.”

 The young boy smiled weakly through his tears

As he hugged his mother and assured her,
“You’re a living thing, mom, and no matter what,
You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

 The young mother began to tear up herself,

Thinking of the man who had praised her beauty,
The man who had vowed to never leave her.

 He did.

 She knew that her boy would someday leave her

As well, as all sons will do.
They leave the nest in search of a life,
Then a mother’s primacy is replaced by a wife.
It is just the natural progression of things,
As certain as wilting flowers, and death.

 “I love you so much, Ethan,” she whispered,

As she locked him in a possessive embrace;
Wanting at this moment to never let him go,
Wanting so to hold him close to her

 As long as she possibly can.

 

                       Rich Hanson

A Hug for My Father

My father's never been much of a man for hugs.
My family's never been much good at expressing affection.
This doesn't detract from my love for my father,
The skilled man of labor who supported his family
With study legs and arms, a strong back and hands,
A truck driving, plastering, sheet-rock taping
Hod-carrier of a man, rugged as a workbench.
A  bulwark of a man, intimidating as a shop teacher.
I'd always been known in Hermantown as "Swede's son."
Not, "Junior," as he had been christened.
He once said that he wouldn't inflict the indignity
Upon a son of naming him "John Henry Hanson the turd."
His force of personality was a formidable enough hurdle
To surmount though.  Everyone knew and loved " Swede."
For too many years I considered myself a failure
Because I couldn't work like him, make friends as he did,
Or dominate a room by sheer strength of character.

Perhaps I've been the one who's never been much for hugs.
I've always kept my life and dreams out of his reach,
Unable or unwilling to share them with him,
Fearing that how different I was from him
Would only elicite his scorn or contempt.
I'd like to say  that I wish I could have made him proud,
But that isn't really fair to him either.  I may have.
But what is poetry but memories that have been cut away
From the ragged clothes of past experiences.
Selective snipping, editing of the loose threads,
Discarding the ragged swatches that just don't fit,
And upon reflection weaving the ones we choose
Into a patchwork quilt of selected images.
The choice of those that we deem worthy of remembrance
Varies with each of us.  Truth is so subjective.
Each of us wraps ourselves in a comforter
Of myth and delusion, suppressing disappointment
While magnifying the moments we wish to hold onto.

I see my young dad proudly displaying the gas station
That he's put together one Christmas morning for me,
With a ramp winding from roof parking down to the garage.
He'd taken the time to wrap each little car individually,
To prolong my joy in unwrapping so many surprises.
Taking delight in my childish excitement and glee.

I see a middle-aged man driving his young teen-aged son
On the kid's Sunday morning paper route.
Dad's old blue Dodge smelled of plaster and mortar,
Enough of a work car to allow "Brownie" to join us.
My chocolate lab companion would bound out of the car
Whenever I did, and run alongside me as I tossed
Rubber-band bound papers onto customer's porches
While my father waited patiently for us to return.

I see a slightly greying man who's driven a day
In his work car to spend some time with my family.
He'd brought his hod, trowel and other tools of his trade
In plastic buckets in the back seat, wedged between bags
Of cement and plaster, his smallest mud box atop it all.
He'd come to tuck point and stucco the brick foundation
Of our home. "It needs it," he explained tersely.

I see an old man now.  Too frail to take care of the home
He built fifty six years ago, the yard he landscaped,
The trees he planted.  To hear his voice quavering,
To see him wrestle to control his Parkinson's shakes,
And to see him have to use an oxygen tank to breathe
Seems a cruel invasion of of a proud man's privacy.
It's so demeaning; so humbling to grow old.
Yet I've never seen him succumb to despair.
Even when it would be so easy to.

Part of me would like to walk over and give him a hug,
To embrace him and to tell him how much he's meant to me.
Yet at this point in our lives I fear
That my act of love would be viewed as a "pity hug,"
A gesture that would make us both uncomfortable.
My father's never been much of a man for hugs.
My family's never been much good at expressing affection.

At the Gravesite of Ralph Greenleaf

The image etched eternally upon your stone
Shows you hunched over, analyzing your next shot.
You've chalked your cue, now follow through.
You believe you've got all the angles figured.
Seven scuttles into the corner pocket, then you sink
Sinister thirteen.  Now you're set to run the table.
No luck involved; just skill and positioning.
Yeah, you were great then.  Two grand a week;
Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and the Prez commanded
That kind of dough. Big bucks for a pool hustler,
Especially during the depths of the Depression
But you had it all then;  charisma, style and talent.

You brought showmanship into smoky pool halls.
Your petite Chinese bride, Princess Nai Tai Tai
Proudly narrating the action ,a billiard ball ballet
Of brilliant hues cavorting across the green felt;
Mirrors suspended above to magnify the motion,
Reflecting it as dancing kaleidoscopic colors.
As " Champ," you dazzled the rubes with your patter,
Charm and an amazing repertoire of trick shots.
You were "The Aristocrat of Billiards," so handsome
That Hollywood moguls wooed you with script offers.
Life's a blind draw though; You can't know ahead of time
What you'll go up against, or what will finally defeat you.

Just when your life reached that balance point
When to pick up a cue made you feel like a king,
The balance tipped from bon vivant to boozehound.
The liquor had become as much of a crutch to you
As a mechanical bridge to a player with no reach.
A bad break or two, then some nasty caroms,
You found you no longer had all the angles figured.
Behind the eight ball, you'd hoist another highball.
The booze you boasted helped you relax before
A tourney soon became your means to escape,
A substitute for confidence, consolation
For not winning, solace for not even showing up.

You ran through your winnings as effortlessly
 As you used to run a table.  At times some semblence
 Of your majesty shown through your dishevelled rags.
 Busted for vagrancy in Arizona, you proved
 Your identity to a skeptical Sheriff by sinking
Eighty-seven balls in a row for him.  This display
Of artistry amazed cowboys who had come to scoff,
This was your last lunge for the surface, though,
Before drink pulled you under.  When your Princess died,
Decades later, her last wish was to be laid to rest next
To "her Ralph."  To have retained such undying love,
Even to your bitter end, yeah....you had been great once.

Free Speech Zones (A Villanelle)

A poem dedicated to the heroes of OCCUPY,
Who are standing up to the evil and its minions

Soon despots can gloat, secure on their thrones.
We'll see the dark path down which we've been led
Now that dissent's confined to "Free Speech Zones."

They've picked their teeth with First Amendment bones
Their security measures fill us with dread;
Soon despots can gloat, secure on their thrones.

Who has the courage left to hurl more stones
At the uniformed thugs whose tasers we've fled
Now that dissent's confined to "Free Speech Zones?"

Too few resist Tyranny's chaperones,
Too mind-numbed to know that they've been misled.
Soon despots can gloat, secure on their thrones.

Listen, you can hear Miss Liberty's groans
"What a sad lot of passive wage slaves we've bred
Now that dissent's confined to Free Speech Zones."

When will we realize Freedom has fled?
Liberty's departed; she's left us for dead.
Despots can gloat now, secure on their thrones
Dissent's been compressed into "Free Speech Zones."