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Gifts
"Which doll do you want?"
Mother whispered in my ear
as I sat on Santa's lap.
One of the hooks that held
Mr. Cater's beard
had slid half way down
his scaley left ear,
but I was not ready to burst
the illusion Mother
held out for me.
"Pretty child," Mr. Cater said
with me on his lap
before a shelf of dolls
at J.C. Penney's.
"Ho! Ho! Ho! Pretty child,"
he repeated.
Two dolls wore matching dresses,
bright red.
One was half the size of the other.
but I knew we could not afford her,
so I said, almost inaudibly,
"I want that little one" and pointed.
On Christmas Eve, I could not sleep.
Through a latticed door
I heard Daddy say,
"But it's so small."
"There was a large one just like it,
but she said she wanted this one,"
Mother said.
"Still, you should have bought
the larger," Daddy said;
"we might could have afforded it.
Christmas still has magic
for a 5-year-old."
"You're right. I'm sorry now I didn't,"
Mother said.
All night long she sewed
outfits for my doll
-- one navy blue, one green,
one a rich pink velvet.
At 79, Christmas still has magic.
All that I have accummulated
seems worth less than the memory
of my parents with that tiny doll.
____________________________________________________________________
To Coleridge
I too am worried about perception, Mr. C.,
not whether the candle before me is real,
but why at one moment it is a light
yellowing my book and taking my gaze
to the floor where Christabel lies entranced,
and yet, why one moment hence, the candle
is only a Walmart special
and I am no closer to Christabel
than its new flame to those they lighted,
having stolen through the silent halls.
There are a thousand thousand candles
before me in this one, or a thousand
thousand me's before this candle.
The only unity I can get
is by denying most of it.
It's not really a question of my soul,
but of by which soul I am told
to see into the heart of it.
My friend Octavio knows behind
which chimney--and at just what angle--
Orion hides each night: I often
forget Orion exists, and wouldn't
know him by sight winking his way
around any roof. Yet I sometimes
see Endymion there or feel
the sea bosoming proudly here,
as our friends Keats and Wordsworth
taught me to do.
Hence, we together walking see
different sorts of identity,
and I am afraid.
____________________________________________________________________
Access
Visiting home from my first job teaching
I read an ad in THE STAR.
"Want to go, Dad? Isaac Stern is here
tonight for the Knox Music Club."
From 7th grade onward, Dad had sat with me
on the hard seats at the high school
for all recitals in the Club's season.
Dad's closest classmate in college
was Knox S., named 'Knox'
for his mother's people, who
for three generations had brought "culture"
to our mill and foundry town.
Mother begged off to play bridge during our adventures.
"Want me to call for tickets?" I asked,
excited. Stern was better fare
than the Club used to draw.
"I hope you'll go, but I have a confession
that only now is it time to make,"
Dad said; "I don't really like classical."
"But all those times, and you said you liked it!"
He smiled.
"Knox liked it. Other classmates liked it.
They had a treasure that would not open for me.
I knew you might close your ears too soon
if I helped you to."
Almost I mistook it for hypocrisy,
but Stern's recording covers me
half a century later in Dad's love.
____________________________________________________________________
Scribbles
When I try to tell you
that I love your hair and eyes,
mystery plunges its oil about my head
and I only smile.
Trust me.
Where have all the cold rooms
squeezed into one tall tin cylinder,
sleek and slideful, #8 Van Camps?
I'm singing in squished ink babble:
"Sweet dreams."
____________________________________________________________________
Going Fishing
"Mister Crier wants to take you fishing,"
Dad said, but I knew better than to say I'd go.
"He's living with a woman and they're not married,
and he swears a lot," I pouted.
As a Baptist 8-year-old in Alabama in 1944
I guessed those facts would carry weight for deacon Dad.
Dad said only, "You've been listening to gossips, son."
Actually on my own I'd heard Mister Crier
laughing and swearing when he and other house painters
loaded the new paint cans, brushes, and turpentine
into their old rattle-traps parked
in the alley behind Dad's hardware store.
True, I learned about the woman,
--who was really no woman, but a 16-year-old girl--
when I eavesdropped on women playing conasta with Mother.
"And Crier's at least 40!" they'd hissed.
"Jim Crier is a good man," Dad said,
"and he puts on no airs.
When a poor widow's roof needs fixing,
Jim Crier fixes it for free,
and when he's fixed all he can afford,
he goes to other house painters and carpenters
and tells them 'It's your turn.'
"Mister Crier is a good friend to me,
I can't be a good friend back
if I insist that he try to be like me.
"He wants to be nice to you, son, and
I hope you will go fishing with him.
You will enjoy it"
I wanted to complain some more,
"Mister Crier has a beat-up old Dodge!" or
"Mister Crier lives in the last house
on the good side of town!"
but I realized I'd used up my bigger thunder,
and it had gotten me nowhere.
As a proper little sissy boy in the making,
I wondered what to do.
And I went.
Not whole-heartedly, but I went.
I liked Mister Crier's beat-up old Dodge.
It had a radio in it and ours didn't.
Mister Crier brought a huge thermos of hot chocolate,
some deviled eggs, and several kinds of sandwiches.
Maybe his girlfriend made them. I didn't ask.
I didn't really want to know.
He took me to a lake I had never seen, in a state park.
I caught several bream, and he cheered me each time.
Mister Crier didn't say much about himself
but seemed interested in what I had to say.
I probably talked forever,
especially about school and the war.
I remember little else, except Dad.
He knew that he could show me a much bigger world
without having to leave the county.
____________________________________________________________________
Louie
Crew can be found at http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew
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