November 1, 2021
I love November!
I love November!
It’s not because of football.
It’s not because I came to my senses
and switched to cross-country my sophomore year.
It’s not because of the sheer beauty of browning leaves,
and reddening leaves, and yellowing leaves.
It’s not because sweaters are my favorite article of clothing.
It’s not because of Thanksgiving (although I do give thanks),
and meeting Filomena in London, and our mutual birthdays.
I love November!
It’s not because of silly elections – I live in Washington, DC
and my vote means absolutely nothing except keeping in practice
(taxation without representation, and all that jazz).
I love November!
It’s the slight twinge in the breeze telling me a new year is coming.
It’s the same drop in temperature that invigorates my brain,
wrapping around my legs so gingerly.
It’s the shortening of days, sunset coming earlier during the fast,
nights getting longer and longer.
November makes me want to stretch out
my sweatered arms and scream Hallelujah!
For Nikki
A poet named Nikki Giovanni
came to Greensboro back in the 70’s
and read for a small group of students.
Somehow or other I found myself
in the mix. Can I just say I plumb fell
in love? She was younger then and I was
even younger and couldn’t find the words
to make an absolute fool of myself.
Since then, Poetry’s been my mistress
and my erstwhile Muse, guiding my vessels
through high seas and low, missteps and false starts
aplenty. I ride the nightwinds, trusting in
and steering by the stars I’ve learned to read,
making up the harmony as I go.
I couldn’t attend a class reunion and wrote this sonnet to send instead.
Dear friends: we weren’t able to breakaway
for the Sunday meeting – these fourteen lines
will fill our seats, we hope, and share the space.
Did y’all know the demarche and the sonnet
traveled a common path? And did y’all know
A-100 is just a room number?
I just found out myself – the tiny threads
that tie us all together – a collage.
Fourteen points is enough for a message
exchanged between princes, across kingdoms.
A room number is a setting for a play
being staged – a romantic comedy,
one hopes, that will make us feel good, reflect
about the times we spent, the lives we lived.
What’s Happening at the Poland/Belarus Border?
I confess that before a member
of my poetry group mentioned it
and brought it to my attention,
I hadn’t really focused on the border
crisis between Poland and Belarus.
Despite the cosmopolitanism
we all claim, we tend to focus
inward, as if our country is the
only one, as if our border problems
are the only ones that exist.
I’m watching BBC news tonight
to catch up on the world. And I’m
sharing with my friends the seldom
anthologized Langston Hughes poem,
“Song of the Refugee Road.”
November 22, 1963
What were you doing on that fateful day?
In second grade our teachers huddled
together, softly weeping, trying not
to let us see the grief their faces wore.
They cancelled school and we went home early.
Our mothers, like our teachers, were weeping,
as if a family member had been lost.
Our fathers got home around 6, just in time
to watch Walter Cronkite read the news
on the black and white TV. Mine just shook
his head as if some tragic end was near.
(We didn’t know about his drinking then.)
It seems so long ago. The pain and grief
we saw on adult faces scarred our souls.
Approaching 66, pt. 1
It took me months to break the habit
of getting up at 5 AM. My wife would ask,
“Why you getting up so early?” I’d give
her a song and a dance about beating sunrise –
milking the cows, feeding the chickens
and fetching eggs for breakfast like I used to do
on summer vacations at the farm. Then I’d recite
the opening stanza from the Paul Laurence Dunbar
poem, “In The Morning” in my best Negro dialect.
She’d just roll over and return to her dreaming
I’d open the front door and drag in the Washington Post.
“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” what a joke that was.
They had no idea how dark and cold it would get
in Biden’s “managed decline” America.
I wake up at 7 AM these days. I cancelled home
delivery of the paper when they refused to correct
the lies they told us about Russian collusion.
They can scrub their website all they want, but
the Wayback Machine is forever, baby.
I still read the New York Times. Only on Tuesdays.
I plan to resume my morning walks in the new year.
Got new sweats and everything! But for now it’ll be
coffee, freshly ground, french-pressed.
Approaching 66, pt. 2
How much would you be willing to spend
for a collection of the best written
articles, essays, book, theater, and film
reviews, poetry and the occasional short play
in one volume each month?
$15? $20? I would. Easily. It’s what
the great magazines of our time, like The Atlantic,
Harpers, New American Review used to do.
All had deep roots in the abolition movement.
All used to have excellent writing, impartial editing,
and timely curation – immediate calls to action.
We could use a new abolition movement.
Perhaps. Human slavery is at an all time high,
but “big media” doesn’t like to talk about it.
Too woke. Too high on Chinese dope, I suspect,
Too afraid of the “powers that be,” the powers
keeping human beings enslaved.
That may be a suitable starting point –
a publication “dedicated to the abolition
of human slavery.” Has a sad, mournful
ring to it, though, like the blues, like we’ve been
there before, like we keep making the same
stupid mistakes, like we’ve lost our moorings.
So maybe we should dedicate ourselves
to re-calibrating our moral compasses
first and foremost, so we can avoid
an impending civil war and instead
generate a new American Revolution.
November Septet
Hi Ray. They always refuse to correct the lies. Never. There was a lot we didnt know on November 22. Right?