|
|
|
|
Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
|
|
| |
|
|
337.
|
Odyssey
Thirty years is a long time
Thirty years...
These streets were mine thirty years ago
I knew them all
Every turn, every alley
A young boy’s kingdom
I ruled and was king
Thirty years ago...
The leaves still fall here
Confettied remains of a bygone parade
The school is still standing
Dirty brown brick, it still hasn’t changed
The playground is haunted
By the laughing cries of children
Swing creaking slowly in the cool autumn wind
Do I sit there boy-like
Smiling at the man
Thirty years older
Thirty years gone by?
The ball diamond is empty
The dirt hasn’t changed
Chain fences still linked
Where the spectators gazed
The dreams were alive then
Like Mantle and Mays
And life was as easy as a bat and a ball
Three strikes you’re out
It’s the umpire’s call
But thirty years passes
Like the flick of a wrist
And the diamond is empty—
Save for me and the dirt.
Thirty years ago
I walked this road
Two, three times a day
From home to school and back again
And every house is where it was
And every tree seems just the same
And there on the corner: 10704
(I’d forgotten that address—thirty years is a long time...)
They painted it a god-awful yellow
But it’s still the same
We were a family then
My brother, sister, parents and I
The times were hard in ‘68
Hell, King was killed
Detroit was aflame
But we were safe
Some lived in fear
We had each other, did we know it then?
Thirty years is a long time.
The second floor there
In the back
My brother and I shared bunk beds
And I cried for hours
Alone on that bed
When they gave my dog away
The best friend I had
How could they know?
I hear him bark
Tethered by a chain to the old birch tree
A country dog, he needed to run
The city’s no place for a wilderness heart
Thirty years
And I still hear him
Barking.
There’s the garage in the back of the yard
It was rickety then, it’s rickety now
And there are the holes
That held a basketball rim
We spent hours there
My brother and I
Perfecting our jumpers, hook shots, and drives
Pretending to be the great gamers themselves
But we were impostors
And I suppose we still are
Perhaps thirty years
Is not so long
After all.
As I drive away
A man, not a boy
I pass the old playground
See a man and his son
The man’s about my age
The boy—as I was
And it seems strange to think
That this father and I
Might have been classmates
Thirty years ago
Yet he has gone his way
And I have gone mine
And thirty years hence that boy will be me
And return to this playground
Look back on his life
His life but a memory
A dream, nothing more
Conceived in sweet sadness
With a flicker of hope
But destined at last
To vanish
Like smoke.
Goodbye to my childhood
Goodbye to these streets
Goodbye to the children who laughed here with me
My dog who still barks at the end of a chain
My parents much younger
My brother and me
And goodbye to the lad who stands at the plate
On a dusty old diamond
The bat high in his hands
Still waiting for a pitch
That never gets thrown.
(Previously published in Dream Forge, Jan.2000)
Laurence Overmire
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
338.
|
Office Christmas Party
The fake ivy
Climbed up the fake gingerbread wall
And curdled ‘round a fake sprig of mistletoe
Hanging precariously
From a fake wooden beam
Giving fake support to a fake ceiling.
Our feet infirmly planted on a fake leaf-laden floor
My true love gave to me
A fake kiss
In front of all of our fake friends
Smiling fakely
And singing
“Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.”
Then they all got drunk
And weaved their way home in their BMW’s.
(Previously published in Nuvein, Dec.2000)
Laurence Overmire
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
339.
|
Old Man and a Bench
Old man sitting on a bench
In the park
At the edge of town.
The paint is peeling
The boards rotting away
From years of pelting from the rain
But he calls it “friend”
This lifeless stone and weathered pine.
It gives him respite
At the close of day
Puts his weary limbs to rest
And brings a smile to his leathered face.
They sit together
The bench and he
Two lost companions
Fading in the darkness
Of the setting sun.
(Previously published in Bardo Burner, Jan 2000, no.12)
Laurence Overmire
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
340.
|
Old Man On The Bed
Old man on the bed
Where do you go
When the lights are dark
And the nurse calls out
Through the door?
You cannot hold your orange juice
And the peas run down your chin
You seem to look right through the walls
Past the TV spewing noise
You cannot hear the endless drone
Of a ringing telephone.
The tubes shoot venom into your heart
Hanging bottled masks to hide your head
White sheeting shroud to cover your loins
There is breath from your lips
But life is long spent
No wonder.
I wish I were there with you
Wherever you go
Old man on the bed
When the lights are dark...
In some dreaming place
There are fields of green
Soft meadows and grassy hills
And there you are walking
With a boy’s careless smile
Your hat in your hand
Your face to the sky
Stopping to smell the flowers
That grow by the way.
Laurence Overmire
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|