J. K. Durick

Some things don’t get a poem
Don’t even deserve a poem
Getting all dressed up in words
And devices, personified, metaphor’d
Even simile’d
Some things just don’t deserve being
Wrapped up in words, in sounds
Like today at the supermarket, I began
Thinking “Supermarket in California”
But got the Vermont version
Ragged people, couples pushing half
Empty carts, rarely speaking, rarely even
Looking beyond their cart and perhaps
Tonight’s dinner
And it doesn’t deserve a poem, or get one
A man in the parking lot flipped someone
His middle-finger
Never clear who was on the receiving end
Perhaps all of us
Didn’t flip the bird, a bird could take flight
And rise up out of the scene
Could become a symbol of hopes and dreams
Could land on that light-post and be all of us
There, a fitting image
The mythic bird in all of us
Or it could just turd down on us
like a real bird might
But as I said, some things don’t get a poem
Don’t even deserve one.

It’s the second cup midafternoon
that seems essential,
something that completes my day.
Not like the morning one
that wakes me up,
stirs my brain, stirs my nerves
gets me ready for the day,
if “ready” is the right word.
The day begins and there I am
cup in hand. The day begins
unwinding its business, first this
then that, you know the kind of
stuff that stuffs our days
fills the time, the grind of hours
the weight of years. It’s almost
predictable, the stirring that first
cup brings lags after a while
slows down, lessens, fades,
becomes just a memory.
My morning self, the guy who was
going to get things done,
accomplished, stops being himself.
That’s when the second cup
shows up, becomes essential to
being me – a little dark roast, some
sweetener and I’m back in charge
of my day
at least until supper time.

Standing there today, as always watching
I got to thinking about all the other plumbers
Who passed through here. Installing this
Unclogging that, here a leak, there a leak
Plunging, snaking – whole generations of
Them traipsing through the house, fixing
Plumbing, a little bit of everything. I have
Watched new toilets go in, sinks, pipes on
Their way in, on the way out, bathroom,
Kitchen, laundry room and more, sump
Pump and drains. It’s like the memories
Start piling on when today’s guy goes on
To ask about the set tub with its three
Different pipes – three generations of them
Now the fourth, standing right there, wrench
In hand, asking questions I never could answer.
I learned early that if I paused long enough
They came up with an answer and continued
On with me still looking on. Maybe I should call
It the house’s circulatory system leading fluid
Through these traps and elbows, or the digestive
System, filling, emptying. It’s here, was here before
Me, has followed me through the years, and will
Probably be here when I’m gone, so I’m standing
There watching plumbers plumb the depths of what
Can go wrong with the things we own.

Lives collide, bump up against each other
in unusual ways. Like today, today I was
looking for Ernest Dowson’s poetry. Like
any good English major, I think of him in
terms of his most famous line about days
of wine and roses, one of those lines that
people in general remember but rarely go
beyond the movie to the poet who wrote
them, a young man who lived to be thirty-
two and is not read much anymore. My
father left me The Poems and Prose of
Ernest Dowson, so when the urge hit to go
back over the poem, I had a source, a book
gathering dust in the family room bookcase.
When I opened it to look, I must admit I never
found the poem, I got distracted, a life bumped
into mine. In the book, acting as a bookmark
was a receipt for four grain raspberry, cookies
I guess, seventy-nine cents each, a total of
three sixteen. It was November 12, 2012 at
10:28 AM at the Ferrisburg Bakeshop in North
Ferrisburg, a quick stop I’m sure, something to
tide him over on yet another crowded day, used
a card so his name is there. There’s nothing odd
about all this – but why was this random receipt
in The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, must
have been there for years, and why today with
me looking for days of wine and roses and finding
this small piece of someone else’s day?

Delay, delayed are powerful words on their own.

They stop us in our tracks, sit us down, get us to
count the minutes sometimes, other times just
to play with our phones, look out the window to
see the weather for the first time today. Let’s say
our plane is delayed in Detroit, the announcement
slows down our day, gets us to start worrying about
connection, or just gets us to enjoy the alliteration
of our dilemma, delayed in Detroit. Unable to resist
you text your son, “dear Dan, damn, we’re delayed
in Detroit.” Delay is like that, a word that has its own
power, but might be hiding something stronger, like
postponed or terminated, and the people/person
saying delay are just holding off the inevitable, like
no planes will ever leave Detroit again, or American
Airlines has given up flying for some more productive
work. We delay, we are delayed, no one needs to
explain the word to us – we delay telling, we delay
admitting, we delay growing up, we’re delayed in our
quest for perfection, delayed in our delay. We’re
standing on the doorstep, delaying ringing the bell;
delay knocking, delay what we know is inevitable.

Let’s investigate this thoroughly, we can call in witnesses,
those few who were there, who saw what they saw, who
knew/know what was going on and waited till now to talk
about the things they saw, and then let’s call on experts to
walk us through the process, things they know and things
they can help us speculate about. It’s that time, a time of
reckoning, time to take stock, look for evidence, assemble
the data and anecdotal evidence, review the side issues, take
this bit and that, piece things together, the things that have
surfaced, become obvious in recent days. Let’s call together
the relevant committees and councils, call together forums
and neighborhood groupings, a special interest group, or two.
Let’s find answers, let’s find the questions we need to ask
them, to ask ourselves. Let’s consider the future, our children,
grandchildren, this strange bubble we live in, this cornfield
we’re walking through, this jigsaw puzzle we are putting
together, and calling home. Let’s cross this river, this inter-
section, this border now and ask why this keeps happening
and then start investigating this whole thing once more.

There must be a drug for this
You know, one that gets you
Up out of bed, stumbles you
Toward the medicine cabinet
To take another day’s worth,
First a capsule, then a tablet.
Then the day would begin to
Take shape, to take on color
Dimensions, it would take on
A perspective to unify all this.
There must be something I
Can take, you can take, just
The proper dose, of course.
Take it dry or with a slug of
Water, then wait a minute or
Two and the effects will kick
In, things will become clear
Once more, have a purpose
To appreciate, like a careful
Sonata, a well-turned sonnet,
Or a perfect sunset. There
Must be a drug for all of this,
These symptoms, this headache,
This aching, this pain. There
Must be a drug, there must be
A drug, something we could take
To make this all seem better.

I never was a numbers man; they lost me back
in grade school, while I spent my time looking
out the window, wishing, hoping for something,
anything beyond, plus this, minus that, numbers
progressing across the board, the fractions and
decimal points, times this, divided by that, as I sat
daydreaming, daydreaming about what I could be,
would be outside the space allotted for learning
this hide and seek, the sleight of hand of numbers,
but now, all these years later, while daydreaming
remains, has become a necessity, the numbers have
come into their own, have become the measure of
my world: my age, my weight, my blood pressure
progress at alarming rates, and now public concerns
play out in numbers that are hard to understand, the stock
market pogoes up and down, gets its own sub-screen
on the news, while scientists call out projected death
tolls, a hundred thousand, two hundred, like auctioneers
standing in front of charts/graphs giving a visual proof
of what the numbers can do – finally telling us we’re not
in grade school anymore.

Shadows at first, blurred voices saying my name,
calling 911, an ambulance, I have fallen,
fallen out of the day, out of the familiar

into the world of blur and shadows, voices expecting
answers, I have none or few, my name, birth date,
the ambulance wants to know the day, the year,

the E.R. asks the same and what I was doing when
I fell; things try to sort themselves out, hook me up,
fluids in, out, blood pressure over and over, an electronic

this or that, my heart, the odd sounds it makes, they make
discussing me and what I have become, one of the fallen
who needs to be explained – it went on for hours, vague hours,

days in the hospital, in rehab, I became strange, living a gap,
a bad dream, a story someone else has written, telling of
fallen angels to this fallen beast, the broken machine
I became.

Life gives us so few chances
To do this sort of thing, just
Think of the things, other ones
We missed the first time by
The things that weren’t on
Our list, but should have been
The places we could have gone
The people we missed, books
We should have read, the things
We should have said, the moments
We missed, skipped over as if
We could get here now and
Make a list of the items to do
Next time around, as if things
Were left to the better me,
The corrective angel to set right.