Sidewalks – A Bouquet of Poems from America

Ray Whitaker

Ray has been writing both prose and poetry since he was seventeen. What Ray is writing now is very different from what he wrote those so many years ago. All writers and poets are writing out of “the Self” however there are directions that the self speaks into, that change. Now Ray’s writing is to put foremost in his work, just who he is writing for. He intends on writing for the everyday man and woman. He firmly believes that poems need to reach into the everyday person’s pictures in their minds, and engage with those. This is where he aims to make a difference in his creative writing. He’s fulfilled when he sees that his work is provoking thought in his readers.

Ray has read around the state of North Carolina [USA] and Colorado [USA], and has been a member or the North Carolina Poetry Society, the Winston-Salem Writers, and The North Carolina Writer’s Network. He has thrice been a ‘Writer-in-Residence” at the North Carolina Center for the Arts and Humanities, at Weymouth, in Southern Pines, NC. He is the father of two daughters, and lives in Colorado Springs, USA.

He has three books published by Newness Twoness Books:  “ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Poems from the Nam,” 2 volume set, and “FOR THE LOST AND LOVED”.  A chapbook, “THE SCUPPERNONG WORKS” is published September 2022. He has one other book he is presently seeking publication for: ‘WHITE DOG SPEAKING.”

Due to the pandemic, most of Ray’s public appearances are mostly via electronic medium. Some of his work has been published in online American, Irish, English, Belgium, and Bali Literary Journals.

 

SIDEWALKS

[Previously found in The Scuppernong Works, a Chapbook published 09/22]

 

A sandaled footsteps by, along with its mirrored opposite

The woman’s well-muscled legs above reminding of some roman, or Greek statue

 

Placed on the busy entrance to the baths of Antioch

Inviting the many hot citizens in, smelling of their labor’s sweat.

 

The sandals keep going out of view

Afternoon sun shines glinting off of windows into trees

 

These are not the plane trees of Antioch

They are oaks and maples on Elm Street, right downtown.

 

Mothers herding children on the sidewalk in downtown Greensboro

Did it just like that, centuries ago

 

Little tykes were hurried past centurions

With swords hanging off belts under breastplate armor

 

Kept together near Mom’s skirts in the market square

And away from the slaves standing, downcast

 

About to be sold, the merchant turns one man around

Slapping the rump enticing watching women with manmuscle.

 

Truth beckons wistfully in the statue on the corner

A perfect body under the old emperor’s head

 

A city sculptor is removing the head, replacing it

With the new emperor’s stone head

 

As if to destroy the old emperor, by removing his head

Would erase the memory of him.

 

Little windy gusts move the leaves on the summer maples

A corner sax player sings gently into the gentle woodwind curves

 

An old Tommy Dorsey melody wafts notes

Heard as curving and bending, settling gently into pink eardrums

 

By the passing smiling city dwellers glad to be off work

Out to choose the favorite restaurant for tonight.

 

The city is a summer evening with a flock of cranes looking about

Each walking the shore catching the occasional minnow or frog

 

One picks at breast feathers

Wishing she were a pink flamingo

 

A few running steps, she is

As airborne as the notes in the Dorsey solo.

 

Music softens lines and allows colors to flow.

 

Arms waving by the wife, not in agreement

On the corner near the street musician

Her husband kicks the dust with his sandal in expressed dismay

As blue as the cloudy evening sky

 

Walking a few tentative steps towards the bistro

Turning his back towards the red and orange words his wife is saying

 

She fingers the dagger hidden in the folds of her dress

Just like a free-woman wife in Antioch would those long years ago.

 

Purple meanings are only found in the sincerity we speak.

 

Dusts of time cling to the laces of our sandals

As ages have passed, few things really change.

 

We search for community as crowds walk by.

Footnotes

Antioch:  one of the largest cities of the Roman Empire on the coast of present day Turkey.

Tommy Dorsey: A jazz big band leader, trombonist, and composer in the 1930-1940’s.  Notably, one of the world’s best jazz trombonists.

***

NOTHING AS NIMBLE, AND NOT AS QUICK

The winter shines thru

Fourteen degrees on the thermometer

Snow unmelted, and soiled

With the detritus of Life so full.

 

There are several months to go

The cold will persist at least three more months here

Only the best music played

Will enhance the getting thru it

 

Now starting to deplete the stockpiling of winter stores

Perhaps Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man”

Will be the churning locomotive to beat the cold.

Pick from the twenty two covers of it, and turn the stereo up.

 

The common man is cold this morning, tho

And there are provisions needed to carry on

Just as The Fanfare is inspiration to millions

Its notes and instrumentation resonate across our minds.

 

I look out the window, over the snow-bent boughs

There is beauty in the cold just clear of the door

Hearing again the brass tonality here in the warmth

Those of the theme’s first fourteen notes…

Another sort of beauty knowing there is more to be with

And aware there is much more to do.

 

Our dogs are lying feet-outstretched towards the hearth

The warmth is flowing from the orange crackling fire

This the evening’s endowment

After the infusion of this day’s past busyness.

 

Observing again another tomorrow will come

Where there is more to be with,

 

Agile to that there is much more to do.

***

SWAMP MARSH

Creation, supposition

Definition, exposition, repetition, repetition…

Here is the ooze of personality.

 

The costal tides roll in

And out

Crabs move in their holes

Saying: “Oh shit, the water is coming back”

Twice a day, every day, as if it had never happened before.

 

Coast-water tides washes, tho

Bringing flotsam in, that is eaten by something

That smacks its lips, saying “mm-mmm, good!”

While flushing out to sea, the coast’s muck becomes

That which some other creature eats with gusto.

 

Toughness survives. We humans are so very complex

The incidents we sustain are so influential

And we are lucky that some things do eventually resolve for us.

 

We humans choose to walk in the tidal mud flats

Those of love and betrayal and all the reedy places in amidst

Our toes love feeling the gush between them.

 

It is the walking through Life when things are not so dusty.

***  

IN A GROVE BY THE SALMON RIVER

Somewhere on this river,

What is left today

Is a sacred spot with water energy!

The Shoshone lived on this river

Long before Lewis

Or Clark, or even eighteen oh five.

 

I stand here now, in this silent grove

Tall pine trees standing watch as the river rushes by

Likely as it did those many years before.

I see things that are not there, wisps in the glen

Grey mist drifting, a feeling of the past

Gurgling over the rapids, flowing by.

 

A wisp of mist swirls, turning into an old man

A Native American he speaks to me

In a language I do not understand

Holding my hands open, shrugging shoulders to show

That I cannot comprehend.

The old Shoshone man walks up to me

 

Looks directly in my eyes

Looking back unflinchingly. I see

There is a depth there in his eyes

I wonder: did he hide his affection

Or win, or lose, something

In his life (not so very different than mine)

 

Our eye communication ends with

His speaking accented English this time

“You are standing on my son’s grave.”

I move to the left a pace or two,

“Now, you are standing on my daughter’s. This

 Entire grove is burial ground for my people.”

 

“See that tall Ponderosa Pine tree by the river?

That’s where my body lies.

I don’t need it anymore.” Again, looking in my eyes

“There down my the riverbank

Is a good place to sit and talk!

You won’t be walking on my family there.”

 

The going over to where the river roared by

Seeing the faces behind his face

There were at lease thirty faces there

Each one a bit smaller than the preceding

Until they faded away.

“My people don‘t hide their love “

 

“Your people are like wheels turning round and round.”

“Sometimes going nowhere,

Fewer times, getting where you have the desire to go.”

I looked at this man from so long ago

Offered him a smoke from my pipe.

He said, “Just blow it thru me”

 

Laughing at the folly, smiling

I asked this man about the failings

Of his people.

His response: “Men don’t understand Women in the tribe”

We honor them, and we try to find a way.”

In this, I realized that we were very much alike.

 

He arose, another of those long looks

We were eye to eye again

A moment that seemed long

However likely only lasted seconds.

Turning, my new friend walked

Into the river and was gone. 

 

Reflecting on this strange occurrence

Did the old Shoshone have to

Shake it up

Perhaps even make it up

To really have a closeness

With the women of his time.

            

Certainly in my times, now

There is a secret world everyone has inside.

Footnotes

>>The Salmon River is located in the state of Idaho, USA, and flows rapidly thru 2.3 million acres of wilderness there.

>>The Shoshone Native Americans are an ancient Tribe of Native Americans that lived in what is now the American upper western states.

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