The Retro Village Coffeehouse was muted tonight. Although the usual clientele were present, the decibel level of the background conversation, which often was more than a tad acrimonious, tonight was subdued. It could, perhaps, have been due in part to the fact that the Folksinger had left the stage for a break and, in her absence, had put on a CD of Jane Siberry singing the traditional “The Water is Wide.” Siberry’s voice was, as usual, thought-provoking, but her treatment of the song enhanced the inherent melancholy to the point where the Coffeehouse habitués were almost spellbound by the song’s bittersweet refrain.
The Resident Radical carried through the boat image, and was thoughtfully haranguing the Capitalist Establishment for using the proletariat as gallery slaves to power the ship of state. The English Literature major thought that, as a traditional work of poetry, the words of Siberry’s piece were sadly simplistic.
The Older Bald Guy sipped a cup of black Guatemala Antiqua, flavoured solely by one spoon of demerara sugar and a shake of cinnamon. On the battered steno pad upon which his pen rested, he had jotted down some thoughts based on the boat analogy.
As a Sail on the Horizon
The boy looked out to sea:
past scrub spruce on rocky tors,
his gaze skipped over gravel shingle
whispering an ageless sough to the sea.
There! Across the reach,
beyond the island!
The tiny sail touching the horizon
would stay with the boy for hours,
traversing his lilliputian world.
Later, as an economic refugee
"going down the road,"
the boy was reminded of the sail
as he watched through the night
on the "Maritime Express."
Small pools of light would appear
in the Stygian darkness
of a New Brunswick night:
promises of comfort and home.
On the horizon of my life
I have seen many sails.
Some have docked, sojourned,
become part of my life for a time.
Others passed, unknown,
into the vortex of Time.
I only wish, at this late date,
that I had tried harder,
made more effort,
to make the journeys of others
as joyous as my own.
©Copyright James D. Fanning
So long ago,
through teenage years
fuelled by, and hormone driven,
my soul would oft’ find solace
and embrace
the child within.
A young adult,
caught in the race
to get ahead, to win,
I blundered blindly, lost, alone,
and shunned
the child within.
And then one day,
in middle age,
I paused, and looked around me:
and in that place of peace and light
I found
the child within.
In coming years,
as my life wanes,
accomplishments forgotten,
may time kindly allow me
to rejoin
the child within.
* Painting by Erin Fanning
The Folksinger was singing one of the Older Bald Guy’s favourites: “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The idealistic simplicity of the lyrics normally invoked the feeling of lost innocence that he generally had when thinking of those long-ago halcyon days of Flower Power, Love and Peace. Today, though, the OBG was depressed. Even the strong brew of Brazilian Santos he was drinking, sweetened with Demerara sugar, did not dispel his mood. The problem was that he had made the mistake of turning on the radio when he was driving in to the Village Coffee House. The news headlines had featured yet another case of a child taking a gun to school and killing several classmates.
The Resident Radical was discoursing on the lack of motivation for youth in a capitalist society. He thought that work camps and education through labour should be mandatory each summer for all children between the ages of twelve and eighteen. The Poet with the Beret disagreed, saying that youth needed more understanding of life and beauty, through poetry, and much less of the popular culture force-fed them by commercial TV and radio.
The OBG sighed, and looked down at the few lines he had written on his steno pad:
A Random Act of Violence
Chimeric wisps
of anger
filter through
the fog of being.
Chance encounters,
choreographed
by Chaos,
put spark
to tinder-dry emotions
shaped by hormonal
hopelessness.
The sudden, explosive,
culmination
of a wasted life,
irrevocably,
irretrievably,
changes the lives of Innocents.
The Coffee House was more crowded than usual this evening. The Older-Bald-Guy was listening attentively to various conversations taking place, not feeling at all guilty about eavesdropping. The Poet-in-the-Beret was trying hard to impress the English-Major-Coed with a diatribe against traditional, metered Lake Poet style poetry. The E-M-C challenged him to come up with four lines as poignant and memorable as four lines she quoted from Emily Dickinson’s “Aspiration.”
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
The Resident Radical said that poetry was an affectation of the petit bourgeoisie, and should be banned, and poets forced to compose Workers’ slogans to advance the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The two Businessmen-With-Ties drinking café latté told him that any form of Socialism went against the natural rule of currency, and should be against the law. They returned to talking animatedly about a hostile takeover their company was planning. The takeover would permit the parent company to maximize return to the shareholders, and would permit streamlining of operations by a levered downsizing of 19 percent of the production staff.
The Older-Bald-Guy hadn’t written any rhyming poetry since his Protest Days, but his cappuccino-stained steno pad now held the following two poems.
The Mirror
Come my friends, and gather round,
a hidden window I have found:
we'll throw the curtains open wide,
and we shall view the folk outside.
What people are these who mock and sneer,
and hold their noses high;
who laugh, and point, and gawk, and jeer,
when a beggar passes by?
What creatures are these who act so sad,
who shake their heads in wonder;
who watch a friend in trouble, glad
to see him trampled under?
Ah! Surely they are strangers,
not friends that we hold dear.
The monsters that we view there,
no kin to us...no fear!
If wrong, I stand corrected,
are they not ourselves, reflected?
The Gourmet
In these brief lines, we shall explore
the habits of the carnivore.
The mighty lion, noble beast,
has oftentimes been known to feast
on animal with grace known well,
the fleet, the lovely, wild gazelle.
The black python, it is known,
if little pigs are left alone,
(oh damn his dark and greedy soul!)
will crush and swallow them quite whole.
The great deceiving crocodile,
will float quite quiet for a while,
and then, with one enormous crunch,
will have some swimmer for his lunch.
In parts of Asia isolate,
I do believe I'd hesitate,
before supping, with great zeal,
on a large green snake for my evening meal.
And yet we find we can forgive,
for all must eat if they're to live:
but sympathy I cannot find
for devouring one of one's own kind.
For I believe the greatest crime
and custom of the present time,
is the credo of man today
to devour anyone in his way.
To sum up my thoughts, most inner,
anyone could be someone's dinner.
OBG
Welcome, and Namaste
Greetings fellow travellers,
For you American friends visiting, you will notice that this old Canadian uses Canadian English in this blog: kindly bear with me. As I blog primarily on subjects that are vitally interesting to me, I appreciate all feedback.
As I tend to be a bit of a language usage freak, I will, as required, edit obscenity and rude comments. That said, I welcome your opinions and discussion.
May your Dharma be clear
Peace
"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumb'red here,
While these visions did appear."
Puck’s epilogue to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
