Meanwhile Back At The Poetry Reading

In May of 1990 a letter from The New Yorker magazine arrived in my mailbox. I had sent them “Dinner With The Babe,” my poem about a fantasy dinner with baseball legend and big eater Babe Ruth. It began as follows:

I’d serve a lot of hot dogs,

buns and beans and beer.

There’s never too much food around

when Mr. Ruth is here.

He’d come straight from the ballpark,

in uniform and cleats;

we’d talk about his batting stance,

and broads and booze and “eats.”

Naturally, having created such a rare work of nostalgic whimsy, I opened the letter expecting words of praise about my “playful surrealism” and “a marriage of art and life made in baseball heaven.”  Instead, it read as follows:

The Poetry Department will be closed from May 31, 1990 through August 31, 1990. Only topical poems or those scheduled for imminent book publication will be considered during this time. All other manuscripts will be returned unread to the sender. Thanks for your cooperation.

And so began my journey as an unpaid, part-time poet. My early efforts were a mixed bag of pseudo-sensitive pablum, self-indulgent preening, and wordplay gone astray. Take, for instance, this short verse that abruptly dead-ended before hitting its stride:

Life is a mystery, love is a riddle,

hi diddle, ho diddle, hey diddle diddle.

The lesson is a hard one, but when you commit to a rhyming structure, you’ll likely have more losses than wins. In this case, once I used the word “riddle” in my poem, I pretty much unlocked the door to diddle. Similarly, I almost rhymed “Phoenix” with “Kleenex” in an unfinished poem but had to abandon the crusade after weeks of not showering or shaving.

Another pitfall for the aspiring (and sometimes perspiring) poet is the tendency to imitate their heroes. Witness this Dr. Seuss-like verse I wrote to my brother in anticipation of a visit from our mom:

Marge, you’ll find, is a good guest.

She will not say “my way is best.”

She will not squeeze your tube of Crest.

And if you feel you need some rest,

she will not make one more request.

Shameless mimicry aside, I increasingly found poetry to be a potent way to share genuine experiences with clarity, imagery and humanity. My feelings about the menace of a coming hurricane became a piece called “Blow Hard” which ended on a relatable up note about dodging disaster:

In the night it’s hard to slumber,

your house could be a pile of lumber.

You wonder why you’ve been forsaken,

fearing death or endless raking.

Then the danger peaks and passes,

you open doors and nothing crashes.

Slowly, you regain your nerve…

“Yeah, I knew the hurricane would swerve!”

One of the keys to a good poem, I discovered, is to be a storyteller who finds fresh ways to say routine things. The short-form framework of a Japanese haiku – 5 ,7 and 5 syllables on three lines – always got my cut-to-the-chase juices flowing:

Waking up early.

Time to think about the day.

First thought: Get more sleep.

Whistle while you work.

People will love to hear it.

Or they will slap you.

Meet you at midnight?

That’s way beyond my bedtime.

How’s six-thirty sound?

Your secret is safe.

I only told ten people.

They seldom gossip.

Having fun with words is always worth the ride, but the slipperiest slope in poetry may be the love poem. I found that out when I met my wife Sherry and proceeded to try way too hard to flaunt my sensitive nature. Observe:

Rooftop romantics leave no star unturned

for a stroke of luck in the moonlight.

I’ve paid my dues in Sinatra and self-pity, 

unemployed heart, overworked and underfed.

Need I go on or is your gag-reflex fully engaged? 

To this day, sometimes my poetry writing is a series of fits and starts that seems destined to fail in expressing anything of worth. You take words, you stick them together and you see if they convey any meaning – some of them do, some of them don’t. Then there comes a moment in my mind when I see and believe and the words that weren't there keep arriving, whole and true and right. That was the case when I wrote this verse in a poem for my wife: 

Indulge me, dance after dance, 

for I have loitered along the way, 

forfeiting precious time in your arms. 

And my atonement now is to love you 

that

much 

more.

It sums up my feelings perfectly. One might even say “poetically.” I don’t think I could write it any better. Unless, of course, I went for the rhyme: 

Indulge me, dance after dance, 

for I am wearing my best dancing pants.

Okay, not better as a rhyme. Moving on.

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A Florida Whimp Whines About Winter

Cold enough for you? I’m freezing.

It was so cold this morning, I saw a squirrel wearing a hoodie.

It was so cold, I saw a collie in line at Dunkin' ordering a double expresso.

It was so cold, a raccoon asked me for directions to the Burlington Coat Factory.

Exactly how cold was it, you ask? It was 28 degrees. In Florida. Okay, I’m not expecting anyone to throw a telethon for us. I’m not even expecting an outpouring of sympathy for my discomfort. But after 40 years as a Floridian, I hope you can appreciate the hardship I’m enduring as I face temperatures well below the 75 degrees I’m used to in the winter months.

“Oh, poor baby,” my brother Jim scoffed during an early January phone call. “It’s 14 degrees here in Nebraska and we haven’t seen the sun in six days.”

“But your 14 degrees is the equivalent of our 28 degrees,” I countered lamely, pointing out the blood thinning effect of spending decades in a subtropical steam bath.

“In a few days you’ll be back soaking up the sun,” my brother ventured. “Meanwhile, we’ll be huddled by the fireplace taking swigs from a flask of whiskey and praying our provisions hold out till spring.”

“It was so cold this morning, I saw an egret wearing leg warmers,” I blurted, trying to match melodrama with imaginary wildlife.

Dressing For Distress

One of the first things you notice when the temperature drops is that a Florida cold snap brings out some strange wardrobe adjustments.

While running errands yesterday I saw a woman on a bicycle wearing a heavy winter coat with a hood. She was also wearing shorts. Earlier today I saw a guy wearing sandals, shorts and a heavy knit sweater. In both cases, it's as if their upper and lower bodies came from two different climates and formed an uneasy alliance in search of better weather.

To be honest, I’m not immune to wardrobe confusion either. When you spend the better part of the year in shorts and a t-shirt, assembling an outfit suited for cooler conditions doesn’t come easily. A long sleeve tee and jeans feels like a logical upgrade, but what if the daytime high never gets out of the 50s?

Under the right circumstances, a mid-weight sweater would be a sensible choice, but that depends on if it’s windy or not. Maybe that heavier sweater that feels like wool but is really acrylic needs to be exhumed from the cedar chest. And what of that smell embedded in the garment? Is that the cedar chest scent or the cold sweat ghosts of Christmas’s past?

Whatever ensemble I pick, I’m invariably too warm, too cold, or convinced that the apparel I need was donated to a long-ago clothes drive because “I’ll never need this stuff in Florida.” Think again, Sonny Sockless.

Hunkering Down Until The Temp Goes Up

When the weather got unseasonably cold, my wife and I found ourselves downshifting to a hunker down lifestyle, canceling all plans and priorities that involved leaving the house.

“What do you want to do today?” I asked Sherry, hoping she was as committed to sustaining cozy comfort as I was.

“I’m content just to putz around the house,” Sherry confided, leaving details up in the air.

“Let’s do that,” I agreed. “I think we have our hands full maintaining body temperature. I’d hate to lose focus on that just to feel actively engaged in the world around us. Besides, it was so cold this morning, I saw a sand hill crane wearing flannel pajamas.” (I have a million of them.)

As the chilly days dragged on and the sun kept its distance, we realized that we were no different that most other Floridians: A lucky group of hearty souls who, despite our sun-splash lives, reserve the right to whine about any dip in temperature that makes us reach for a light jacket.

If nothing else, I hope this cold weather commentary raises awareness around the rest of the country that winter's icy assault sometimes effects Florida folks, too.

To my fellow Americans in Northern and Mid-Western States: Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

To my Fellow Frozen-In-Place Floridians: We WILL get through this. Your courage and resilience give me goosebumps.

Of course, that could just be my body’s reaction to the temperature dipping below 60 degrees.

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