Michael Denington pays close attention. In straight forward language, each of these poems is a moment closely observed. As in the title poem, the author "seeks home" with a compassionate and generous heart. --Darnell ArnoultAuthor, What Travels with Us, and the novel, Sufficient Grace With an invitation to a ¿walk in the park¿ the author takes the reader on a journey in which he shares episodes of his life. The book provides lovely glimpses such as that of a woman kneeling in her flower garden while at work on her masterpiece. After enjoying many pauses . . . at a variety of places, we are brought to a stop following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. ¿Empty Boots¿ vividly recalls the shock and grief of that hideous crime. On the whole, this book evokes enthusiastic response. Winifred Hamrick FarrarPoet Laureate of Mississippi. Whether Michael Denington is in a familiar setting drinking ¿the cool, sweet home flavored water¿ from a gourd, or backpacking high on a mountain where he sits ¿in awe of near touchable stars and an apple slice of moon,¿ he is an acute observer, his memorable imagery hooking the reader. Denington¿s voice is straight forward, from his narrative poem about riding a stick horse as a child, through his very adult description of Memphis marinating ¿in a cold, damp bowl of discomfort.¿ . . . Most of the poems are autobiographical with sketches of youth and home, travels abroad, war experiences, his wandering ¿through life¿s barriers, ¿to finally, now that he is older, ¿to drift southward . . . seeking home, to join my forebears in the fertile sediment of our familial delta.¿ Clovita RiceFormer editor of Voices International andformer director of the Arkansas Writers¿ Conference Cover photograph, White River at Calico Rock, Arkansas by Terry Thompson, TTERRY@att.net
Like a River
By Michael R. DeningtonAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Michael R. Denington
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-2332-1Contents
Promise..........................................xiiiILike a River.....................................3Left-Handed Perspective..........................4Stitches.........................................5The Bucket.......................................6Fragmented.......................................8A Life Not Chosen................................9The Hazel Eyes...................................10Handoff..........................................11The Dawning......................................12Muse.............................................14Without Fanfare..................................15Aboard the Amadeus II............................16Mantra...........................................17Lonesome Moon....................................18Past Midnight....................................19Autopsy of a Poem................................20Donor............................................21Deadline.........................................22Limits...........................................24Masterpiece......................................25After-Effect.....................................26IIBountiful River..................................29Saigon Le........................................30Pushers..........................................31A Mother's Lament................................32The Question.....................................33Small Fry........................................34Empty Boots......................................35Curator..........................................36Valediction......................................38Lifeknot.........................................39Depression.......................................40Transparent Image................................41Winter...........................................42Man in a Red Shirt...............................43Wisteria.........................................44Lines............................................45Vestiges.........................................47Sweetest Hour....................................48Crescent Moon....................................49The Forecast.....................................50Zeal.............................................52Colors...........................................53Fishing..........................................54IIISerpent River....................................63Redemption.......................................64Little White Lies................................65Omnipresents.....................................66Night Vision.....................................67Backpacking......................................68Spirit...........................................69Raw Materials....................................70Homespun.........................................71The Deep.........................................72Rainbow..........................................73Revelation.......................................75IVHuman River......................................79The Warrior......................................80Lesson of the Cold War...........................82Politicians, Wars, Then More.....................839/13.............................................84Games Boys Play..................................85Puff.............................................87Fences...........................................88Business of War..................................89Unwelcome Veterans...............................90Vietnam..........................................91Benediction......................................95
Chapter One
Like a River A small spring bubbles up in the north, the gift of its rill marries another and the newlyweds join a third, and so on, until a creek is birthed, unites with others, pools, fills the Itasca bowl, overflows, forms a southbound river seeking the sea, siphons the strength of lesser cousins, divides a national family into east and west, meanders, doubles back on itself again and again, collects the energy of storms, carves through its banks, cuts off bow tie loops to create horned lakes, deposits generations of silt, builds a great, rich delta blanketed by southern summer snow. I was born beside the river, on a mighty bluff at the head of the delta where musicians wailed the blues in Beale Street bars, in the city graced by the king, where the dreamer died. Like the river, I have wandered, weaved through life's barriers, circled in swirling eddies gathering strength until freed to breach confining banks, chart a new course, charge toward my destiny. Now I drift southward in an ever-slowing stream in an ever-widening basin, seeking home, to join my forebears in the fertile sediment of our familial delta.
Left-Handed Perspective Slashing across Memphis in high speed interstate traffic between rush hours, AMBULANCE leaps into my rearview mirror, landing in readable format because each letter is reversed and the word is written backwards across the hood of the EMT rig threatening my rear bumper. The reflecting mirror and reversed word form a double-reverse relationship with me sandwiched in the middle, a complex arrangement, but one not nearly so confusing as the single-reverse situation handed a high school friend who severed his right arm halfway between elbow and wrist while trying to clear a jammed corn picker, a tragedy that led him to develop a left-handed perspective on activities such as buttoning a shirt and signing his name.
Stitches for Joe Hester We set our lives aside and responded to the "Come Now" of an hour ago. After a muted, ICU waiting-room conversation we found our way through a maze of beige hallways filled with sharp, disinfectant odors to this small, curtained room where we now wait, listening to your mechanical breaths, praying you, husband of one, friend of two, mentor of three, will rally or die peacefully. Scratchy eyes watch your heart stitch a zigzag seam across the monitor's screen. We stand mesmerized as the seam takes on a ragged, loose-thread appearance and the stitch count begins to fluctuate: 184......24......73..... 148.....96.....124.....81....33...42...31... 22...15..8..4..0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~....
The Bucket A wooden bucket half-filled with life sits on the wash stand beneath the hand pump spout located on our screened back porch. A drinking gourd hangs from a nail by a looped string passing through a hole drilled in its narrow handle-end. The bucket waits to transport cooking, cleaning or bathing water into the kitchen, or carry overalls, work shirt and underwear wash water to the scrub board, wringer and washtubs standing at attention in their Monday morning backyard formation. As I lift the gourd to drink my fill of cool, sweet home-flavored water, untainted by chemicals or half-clogged filters, overflow drops dribble back into the bucket with barely audible splashes, creating a family of small, concentric waves that flow outward, deflect from the bucket's sides and lose their identity among stronger, younger siblings. Thirst slaked, I open the screen door, swish a quarter gourd of rinse water reserved for the purpose and fling it out the door, disturbing bird dog, King, from his morning nap on the small, green mattress of grass growing on the sunny side of the steps. King stands, stretches a deep bow, yawns and ambles a slow, tail-wagging gait toward me, hoping for a drink, a scratch, and a little conversation.
Fragmented a milky unfettered wisp roams southern appalachia beneath the blue dome of forever. in unrelenting pursuit of a lost grail, the tattered, flimsy patch skims rocky gaps, meanders rhododendron-scalloped switchbacks, descends into narrow, hardscrabble hollows nourished by spring runoff and sepia dust. skirting coal towns and mine entrances, the threadbare cerement suffers endless heartbreak searching peaks and valleys, wailing for its lost infant.
A Life Not Chosen A wizened old man approaching eight decades sits alone in a Cajun coffee shop sipping Community dark roast with chicory in midafternoon of another gray day that began in darkness when sleep abandoned him to oatmeal tasteless as gruel and his first of four rounds of life-sustaining pills followed by a lengthy conversation over brown blossoms in memorial gardens then a cardboard-flavored frozen lunch microwaved warm and his second round of medicine. After napping in his recliner through an hour of television he trudged four long blocks to read a leftover newspaper over a cup of coffee. Between sections he stares out the window and reflects that he did not choose this life but neither did he choose another.
The Hazel Eyes Peering through his reflection in one of two oval windows he sees a woman's hazel eyes staring back at him from a two-dimensional room, the hint of a smile decorating her face, a smile erased by pneumonia attendant to the 1918 flu epidemic that left a two-year-old toddler incapable of understanding her mother's disappearance, and a husband incapable of finding a fix for his broken heart in the bottom of any bourbon bottle or the arms of any of four subsequent spouses. Peering through his reflection in the second oval window he sees a crinkled version of the toddler's hazel eyes staring back at him from another two-dimensional room, the hint of a more familiar smile lighting her face, a smile displayed despite her half-orphaned, pillar-to-post upbringing, despite her battle with tuberculosis that cost the breath of a lung collapsed by saw and scalpel sacrifice of ribs, despite his returning gaze from the last pair of the hazel eyes.
Handoff Dark-suited men hold muted conversations cloistered in private groupings of plush, leather-upholstered chairs and sofas or seated across mahogany desks in the lobby of Beijing's four-star Sino-Swiss Airport Hotel as clerks process travelers, punctuating each transaction with a smile. Three Chinese women wearing skirted, black business suits enter through the hotel's revolving door, pause to review photographs in a red leather folder, then sweep the lobby with their eyes, hesitating at each of several Caucasian couples. One of the women waits near the entrance as the other two sit facing the short hallway leading to polished brass elevator doors, which they watch with an expectant air. A blond couple and their pre-school son exit the elevator speaking American English. As they approach the lobby the two Chinese women rise and move toward the threesome, smiling, hands extended, heads bobbing. Following brief greetings the women produce a photograph from the red leather folder. The American woman smiles, and one of the Chinese women nods toward their waiting companion. She walks to the American, hands an unwanted baby girl to her new mother, who cuddles the infant to her breast and breaks into tears.
The Dawning for Butch Winter Last night I realized I could lose you, the dawning not orange splashes walking our horizon, but closing eastern darkness as purplepinks ushered yesterday into its graveyard of today. I eased away from your tangle of tubes, conversations interrupted by bluesmocked interrogators-
what did you drink today? how many times did you urinate this afternoon? did your bowels move? Rejoined, we resumed our tales from yesterdays- some more than half a century old- tales of boyhood blunders, successful deer hunts, celebrations of births and birthdays, the biopsies of your first bout with the devil, this second bout, chemo and radiation to reduce, then kill the heart of your watermelon belly. Next fall- if your strength returns- we'll hunt together again, but if you can't walk, I'll push your wheelchair onto the ramshackle porch of the old summerhouse down by the creek. We'll watch a pale sun track the southern sky, retell the old stories and grill venison tenderloins for lunch. Today we head north from Memphis, traveling back roads toward the big, white farm house home of grandparents, birthplace of parents, now surrounded by fields no longer fenced, but laid open for row cropping cotton by the few who stayed to work land leased from the many who moved on to new lives in suburbia, writing software, nursing, hawking hardware, teaching, building cars, driving trucks, their only connections- to the crystal air and brown dirt of spring planting, dust-caked sweat of yellow summer haying time, ice and mud of century-old barns clamped in winter's dark bite, sweet smell of frozen needles on frostbitten fall mornings in the woods- reduced to misty memories and occasional longings to lounge again on the ramshackle porch of the old summerhouse down by the creek, reflect on old loves, and grill marinated venison tenderloins for supper.
Muse wearing faded overalls and gray shirt beneath a wrinkled, wind-burned face topped by wispy-thin white hair, he sits at the back corner table of a country caf laboriously turning manuscript pages with the gnarled fingers of a new england farmer. we swap nods as I take a seat at a table near the kitchen door. after a bowl of chowder I frame a new poem, stand, pull on my mackinaw to leave the mingled fresh baked bread-roast beef aromas and wade into a day submerged in a slate-blue lake of winter chill. at the door I turn to wave goodbye but he has vanished. Without Fanfare Society's orphan paces beneath the protective overhang stretching across strip mall movie houses, store fronts and restaurants. Dressed in his usual uniform of faded gray work pants and shirt, sneakers with paper-thin soles, he wears a light jacket to divert today's cold winds from his rail-thin body as he rambles along, head tilted forward, eyes fixed on the concrete a body length before him. Avoiding eye contact, he dodges an oncoming shopper, steps into the gutter, pauses to light one cigarette from another, climbs back onto the sidewalk and continues on his way, mumbling, holding the world at bay, fleeing the hounds of war howling threats only he can hear, the invisible symptom of his incurable head wound. Soon his stick figure silhouette will crumble without fanfare into a field of stones. Aboard the Amadeus II Wind-blown ripples crack the Main-Danube Canal's surface mirror reflecting fractured afternoon sunrays across the ceiling of the lounge where we sit with companions over sweet wine pressed from grapes near Wien as our cruise ship lock-steps north, lifting us over the continental spine dividing North and Black Sea watersheds, a twentieth century marvel confirming Charlemagne's eighth century vision.
Mantra Each night as I roll onto my left side and settle in a relaxed, fetal position, the last move before drifting into my first nap of the night, a wisp of song wafts through my head to echo in the canyons of my mind- my mantra for the night. Before morning, dream sounds or images will disrupt my rest several times. When my mantra drowns out the intruders I go back to sleep, but when my echoes surrender in defeat, I stumble, mumbling to myself, into the half-dark bathroom, pencil and paper in hand, and try to process sounds and pictures of images mined from the shaft of sleep into a new poem. Lonesome Moon Revolving hands dole out time under a lonesome moon whose placid face remains stoic as it revolves through rotating phases- peek-a-boo infant, shy toddler, brazen brat- but never strays beyond the grasp of protective earth to become lost among precocious cousins seeking attention. Past Midnight In the pitch dark of past midnight some-indeterminate-something disturbs our private universe and I wake in foggy uncertainty wrestling for rational thought. Senses race to full alert as I slow-roll a half turn, look at you lying buried in sheets, blanket, pillows, the covers rising and falling gently, almost imperceptibly, to the regular rhythm of your breathing. I feel before hearing a deep, distant rumble and run its vibrations through my catalog of potential causes- earthquake, storm, airplane, train. The next few moments seem to last half an hour before the rumble repeats, nearer, followed soon by rain drops pecking on the roof of our bedroom bay. Brilliant white strobes flash through cracks in closed shutters, splashing our bedroom with the flickering lights of an old movie house. Pecking swells to hammering and lightning strikes beyond the back yard. Its thunder clap and a window-battering wind blast interrupt your breathing pattern. I caress your shoulder. Your hand finds, squeezes mine. We lie listening as the storm lashes our little world with its fury. Even before the intruder departs your hand relaxes in mine and your sleep-induced breathing rhythm returns. Autopsy of a Poem Cocooned in the comfort of my study surrounded by books -and computer- I define fractals drawn on gray winter sky by a tangle of bare limbs as I wait out long delayed support from Parnassus, specifically a visit from the fickle daughter of Apollo and Mnemosyne. But she's off fickling elsewhere. In her protracted absence I dissect verse her graced presence inspired. I flay a poem, slice flesh, sinew from skeleton, collapse its structure. Then I strip out and examine the poem's viscera where conceptual fodder generates assonance, alliteration, rhyme, meter and punctuation energy. Following that, I remove the poem's heart, its energy pump that too often tries to be the brain. Then I crack the skull and read the poem's message, its raison d'etre. Donor The parking lot sign reads Donors Only, in the window, Open, on the door, Come In. He accepts the invitation. After the questionnaire, the sphygmomanometer cuff squeezes out one forty over seventy-six, the second hand times sixty-four beats in a minute, the thermometer beeps at ninety-seven point four, and the pricked-finger blood drop sinks in the copper sulfate solution bringing dread to a satisfactory conclusion. His donor lounge chair is new, comfortable, its flat arms slanting out, falling away like a sled run on a snow-covered golf course fairway. He lies back, eyes the sign facing him. One Pint Can Save.... A light green medical smock approaches, blocks his view. "Which arm do you wish to use today?" Out pops the macho quip he repeats six or seven times a year. "You want regular or high test?" She banters back "I need a pint of the high test today, Hon." "Better take the left then." Waiting to leave, he reflects on the sign, -One Pint Can Save Up To Three Lives- as another fifty-six day countdown begins. (Continues...)
Excerpted from Like a Riverby Michael R. Denington Copyright © 2009 by Michael R. Denington. Excerpted by permission.
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