70 for 70: Writings From The Stoop and Beyond (42) – “The poetry of neighbors” (for Jim, Louise & John) (October 2013) Gary Soto is a famous poet. Famous enough for his wife to have convinced a London shopkeeper to sell him a Rod Stewart jacket that he had no intention of ever selling. My poems have never gotten me a jacket. My words open no new portals to the world, no doorways to John Malkovich. My poems arent optioned out. Robert Bly once read one of my poems at the Tansy Bookshop in Lawrence. Maybe I write too quickly; dont revise enough. Maybe writing poems on my iPhone while walking the hills in the neighborhood is poetically offensive. Our next door neighbor called me early this morning. Louise fell, he said. Can you come over and help me pick her up. I did. Louise is better now, although becoming more delicate. Are you the blogger, the voice called from across the street. The one whose stuff my dad sends me. She was sweeping off her dads pine-needled driveway. Yeah, I think I am, I replied, walking over to say hello and shake her hand. She tells me her mother died in late July, and her father suffered an aneurism and was operated on and spent weeks in the hospital and more weeks in a nursing home. We talk more. John, her 87 year-old dad, drives up. He and his wife had been all over the world. Hes been friends with great people. Rode in cars with Robert Oppenheimer; exchanged stories with Martin Luther King, Jr. John likes my political stories; he likes my poems; he says that when he was in the Skilled Nursing Facility he missed my writing. He says Im spiritual. This is more than enough for this mornings walk. This is an iPhone poem. It makes walking laps rather choppy.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 15:00:11 +0000
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