TOM'S POETRY CHANNEL

INVITATION TO THE BLUES

           

And suddenly there it is, hiding in plain sight,

                      B-flat 9,

right there on page 89 of Hal Leonard’s

Guitar Method: Incredible Chord Finder,

a real two-fingered wrist-wrencher for a

simple fella whose fat little fingers

after forty years are still fretting out

‘House of the Rising Sun’ and all those

other same ol’ same ol’ C, G, A-minor

and F-chord songs of the sixties. But...

when my little flat-top’s strings float

this one back up to me all smoky and

dark and minor... I mean, man, it’s like

some hip fairy godmother just waved her

magic wand to the light switch, waxed my

kitchen all

neon café-blue

shape-shifted my side chair into the

center-stage barstool... and out comes

Scotch and soda... mud in your eye...

baby do I feel high... oh me oh my...

and it hits me, man... it’s like...

maybe I’m at The Crossroads...

and off in the distance I can just

barely make out the sweetness

of ‘Bye Bye Miss American Pie’

wafting its way out of town

on the wayward wind...

but, whoa, Dude...

                     B-flat 9!

ON THE BEACH

                          

Swept up in a beachcomber gold rush on P.E.I.’s terracotta beaches

we prospect feverishly for the mighty sand dollar— with one buck

already in the bank... while up ahead, a gull bullies a hapless crab

savaging it with a jabbing beak... yanking it, flipping it over

in stark Wild-Kingdom cinéma verité and then, with a mouthful of

appendages clamped like clothespins in her bill and bomb-laden

with the cumbersome cargo, she lumbers herself airborne…

where, at an altitude of twenty feet, the stringbean legs pop

their joints like Legos... bombing our little Buster Crab back

onto the beach-head with a carapace-jarring thump! Whereupon

the gull, this… 'Jackie the Ripperess'… this angel of death...

descends with deadly finality upon her victim’s

now-much-handicapped gesticulations... When—

 

(fortissimo) Here I come to save the day! That means

that Mighty Mouse... is on the way!"

 

…Later, cradled in my cupped palms, our reclaimed-but-crippled

crustacean bogarts me his best grimacing grin, a wink,

a tip of the hat, and the thumbs-up… and with a k-plunk,

I sink him like a stone back into the safety of the surf

to live another day... to regale the little grandcrabs with

his tall tale of the fantastic flight over the sand

and The Rescue he’ll never tire of re-telling...

GOOSE BUMPS

            

wild-eyed and incredulous, I roll to a stop in the driveway and

sit reconnoitering from a safe distance this anomaly of the

                    live goose

standing stock-still like some big white, campy

pink flamingo speared into my front walk, right here in

the middle of town… leaving me pondering whether this be

prank or accident or cryptic omen from the gods…

wondering how it came here and why here, why my house

and what does it want? …I leave the getaway car idling

step cautiously out (open-door policy in effect) and—

…what is wrong with this picture?    any goose in my life

would be bizarre but this one… this one has a problem…

like a short-circuited popcorn-popper from hell, this bird is…

"evacuating" ever so ho-hum, matter-of-factly on the asphalt

                    crapping

steadily, mechanically, forever… yes, the goose that

shows up at my door will be the sick goose, the goose with

diarrhea —shit! do geese get rabies?— I dare not avert my eyes,

but something else… something in my peripheral vision…

a snow-white, you-know-it-doesn’t-belong-there patch of

something has been pecking at the shell of my shock,

prompting me, nagging me to turn, to look, so…

jesus-mary-and-joseph! lounging weightily on that

sagging branch only twelve feet off the ground and not

fifteen feet from ME... giving ME the old jaundiced eagle-eye

is the most powerful, up-close, in-my-face, wild kingdom

bald eagle I ever want to see— time stops... this is no dream

I can count talons, distinguish feathers...

I am a vulnerable, transfixed mouse who has stopped breathing

because if I move, scamper for my pick-up, shark-hooks will

impale my shoulder blades before I can slam the door behind me—

but some distracting racket, like shirts flapping on a wind-

whipped clothesline breaks the spell and I wheel to find myself

in the immediate flight path of one desperate bird-bogey at

twelve o’clock, revving its twin-engine wings in a spectacular

low-to-the-ground take-off, the last of its cargo jettisoned and

steaming on the runway— instinctively I duck left, barrel-roll

onto the lawn as the backwash of the wings and the flight shadow

pass over me... and from my knees, watch my goose,

already diminishing in size, fly for the haven of

any port on its last star-crossed horizon…

the eagle drops in a slow-motion

glide from the limb, patiently

powering up, gathering speed,

resuming the mission and...

he’s in no hurry— i feel my hackles rise—

he’s an ace, this boy, it’s all in a day’s work

for him... a milk run... a turkey shoot…

and humbly, foolishly, I realize now that

I had nothing to fear, I was in no danger

I

was merely somebody else’s

pathetic, not-quite-good-enough

but better-than-nothing

diversion