I’ve filled a dark blue, glass vase
with weeds I gathered from my backyard,
early September clusters of small white flowers
most resembling baby’s breath, which florists favor
for their rose arrangements or other unweedy bouquets.
Huddled together in the vase,
cut short from their main stems
their green leaves spearhead shaped,
they might be apt for lovers after all.
No gardenia fragrance, but neither
are they malodorous,
These visitors from abundant life
in my backyard, a jungle rejecting
horticulture and so well able to spare
some samples, need not apologize
for their absence from any floral catalog:
their process as awake to the observer
as any paid for or planted flower.
I Once Shook Hands With Vincent Price…
a few hours before he began his one-night, one-man show
at our rural U. with a reprise of his scary lines from Michael Jackson’s
“Thriller,” which he understood our students would go wild over.
His blue eyes twinkled when I told him how honored I was; he could
feel how much I meant it, as he gripped my hand, somehow aware
I had sympathy for all the mediocre movie and TV roles he had
had to accept in order to keep on acting.
During the show he even told us how his A-list career had unraveled
once method actors like Dean and Brando took over Hollywood, leaving little
room for classically trained Yalies with resonant voices. I felt the poignancy
of his regret over having to shift from classics like “Laura,” or “Song of Bernadette,”
to schlocky Roger Corman, pseudo-Poe pictures, and even more horror-ible films.
His sense of humor safeguarded his dignity through all the television he did, banking
on his ready-set persona. Egghead on “Batman,” kept him a villain, but I preferred
his Count Sforza on “F Troop,” when it was a mistake to believe him a vampire,
since Sforza, like Vincent, was really just a nice man who sometimes donned a cape.
Vincent Price, St. Louis born and raised, you came back to our little Missouri town
more than once. I like to imagine you returned to find out if anyone paid
heed to who you really were. I like to imagine in the seconds
we shared you received that wistful recognition, firm in our handshake,
acknowledged in your laughing blue eyes.
After Being Retired for a Little Over a Year
I’m not surprised but still chagrined
to be a senior-citizen, card-carrier
for AARP (only way to qualify
for their supplemental insurance) a guy
who gets pension and social security checks
each month that together are a bit higher
than his working salary ever was.
I still haven’t found myself
longing for a new job, nor learned how
to cobble together a worthwhile day without one.
Travel, except to see family or friends
doesn’t interest me much, especially
since my blood sugar became too high to allow
even the thought of eating my way through
Europe or some high-caloric cruise.
Yes, I like my hours volunteering at the Food Pantry,
time with family, guitar, Mets games or TCM,
and am also back to writing a little, despite a lot
of years of very few folks caring much (I’ve got
sixteen not-best selling books on my shelves to prove it.)
Still, I fret over no longer mattering,
of all the condescension, especially from
the well-intentioned, the perhaps many
years ahead of benign insignificance
in moderately okay health
before things get much worse than that.
After Singing "It's Impossible" Makes My Wife and Daughter Cry
It’s get-away week for Maria, moving
to Omaha on Friday, the beginning of her new
life as a college student at Creighton. All summer she
has prepared, working two jobs, buying what is needed
to get along without the five of us she'll leave
behind. These last few days before packing her possessions
into our green van, we're doing whatever we can think
of to make this last week memorable. All her favorite
dinners: taco night; chicken roll with mashed potatoes;
lasagna from her grandmother's recipe, with the home-
made sauce and mini meatballs, the whole milk
ricotta, mozzarella and imported parmesan.
We always used to sing together, our finest
form of prayer each night before bed.
We've let it drop these last teen years,
but tonight we recall all the old favorites:
"Moon River," "More," "I Only Have Eyes for You,"
"You Belong To My Heart," "The Shadow
Of Your Smile, old songs we’ve helped them
newly love. “It's Impossible" is the one
getting us most emotional, with twelve year old
Claire actually sobbing, while her mother's eyes
glisten, understanding the song itself knows
what it sings, as we deliver back its melody,
the reverberation of loss immeasurable,
impossible as an adequate goodbye.
After I Cured Myself of Heart Trouble
so bad I was in rapid arrhythmia hours each day,
never knowing when I would reach the point
of sinus rhythm no return, I looked back over three years
worth of faulty prescriptions, constant worry when
a stroke would be the very end result of all my heart’s
improvisations, and concluded the worst part had not been
the daily dizziness before (and after) my diagnosis, nor the ambulance
ride ninety miles to the nearest cardiologist, nor the cardiac
catheterization and its only one in fifty chance of killing me,
nor the nightly wake up out of rhythm, trying to retrieve dreams,
the most unsettling of which were nicer than the nightmare
of my atrium and its fibrillations, nor even the canceled fishing
trips, snowball fights, other, irretrievable moments with my kids,
but rather the surgeon who insisted it was time for an ablation or else,
the mere searing of my heart for some hours with a laser
to murder its ability to step out of line ever again, maybe,
if luck was with us, and, if not, just another opportunity
to operate again, so, for him, win-win.
That was when my anger overtook my fear,
I ignored MD options, took an hour on the internet
found a simple combination of supplements
the white coats never mentioned, one of them head-shaking, “Go ahead,
try them; they won’t do any good,” added fish oil on my own intuition
to the magnesium, potassium, taurine alchemy some sensible
cyber co-sufferer suggested and have since, for some years
aimed my heart’s beating regularly away from those smug MDs.
Bionote
Joe Benevento retired last year after 40 years of teaching literature and creative writing at Truman State U. in Kirksville, MO. The most recent of his sixteen published books are, The Cracker Box Poems from Mouthfeel Press and My Perfect Wife, Her Perfect Son, a seriocomic novel about the Holy Family from the viewpoint of St. Joseph, with Histria Books. Benevento is donating 100% of all royalties from that novel to charity. His poems, stories, essays and reviews have appeared in close to 300 different places, including Prairie Schooner, Bilingual Review and Poets & Writers. He is the longtime poetry editor for Green Hills Literary Lantern.
Claire actually sobbing, while her mother's eyes
glisten, understanding the song itself knows
what it sings, as we deliver back its melody,
the reverberation of loss immeasurable,
impossible as an adequate goodbye.
After I Cured Myself of Heart Trouble
so bad I was in rapid arrhythmia hours each day,
never knowing when I would reach the point
of sinus rhythm no return, I looked back over three years
worth of faulty prescriptions, constant worry when
a stroke would be the very end result of all my heart’s
improvisations, and concluded the worst part had not been
the daily dizziness before (and after) my diagnosis, nor the ambulance
ride ninety miles to the nearest cardiologist, nor the cardiac
catheterization and its only one in fifty chance of killing me,
nor the nightly wake up out of rhythm, trying to retrieve dreams,
the most unsettling of which were nicer than the nightmare
of my atrium and its fibrillations, nor even the canceled fishing
trips, snowball fights, other, irretrievable moments with my kids,
but rather the surgeon who insisted it was time for an ablation or else,
the mere searing of my heart for some hours with a laser
to murder its ability to step out of line ever again, maybe,
if luck was with us, and, if not, just another opportunity
to operate again, so, for him, win-win.
That was when my anger overtook my fear,
I ignored MD options, took an hour on the internet
found a simple combination of supplements
the white coats never mentioned, one of them head-shaking, “Go ahead,
try them; they won’t do any good,” added fish oil on my own intuition
to the magnesium, potassium, taurine alchemy some sensible
cyber co-sufferer suggested and have since, for some years
aimed my heart’s beating regularly away from those smug MDs.
Bionote
Joe Benevento retired last year after 40 years of teaching literature and creative writing at Truman State U. in Kirksville, MO. The most recent of his sixteen published books are, The Cracker Box Poems from Mouthfeel Press and My Perfect Wife, Her Perfect Son, a seriocomic novel about the Holy Family from the viewpoint of St. Joseph, with Histria Books. Benevento is donating 100% of all royalties from that novel to charity. His poems, stories, essays and reviews have appeared in close to 300 different places, including Prairie Schooner, Bilingual Review and Poets & Writers. He is the longtime poetry editor for Green Hills Literary Lantern.
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