My Town

Like an an old person with some major surgery,
Belpre has its small areas of clotted memory
continuing, in the humdrum way,
the habits of its formative years.

Graceful homes by the river
are kept up and re-painted.
Blocks here and there harbor stately maples and walnuts.
Old homes, some kept up, some in disarray
line the street grid.
The avenues are now either thoroughfare or residential.
But it’s still quiet,
as if setting in a spell,
with one hundred miles of forest
between here and any metropolis.

At times I just set on my front porch and murmur
“one hundred miles of trees,”
as the sun sets through them.

The post My Town appeared first on Clutch MOV.

Harmar Tavern

Years ago, the old fellow from the worm shop nearby
would shuffle in for his afternoon beer to escape the heat.
He’d rest his cane and in the cool, inner twilight,
I could hear the coins chatter on the bar top.
He used to work for my mother in law’s, mother’s, third husband’s
engineering firm called, “Dig it, Ditch it & Dam it.”

The mugs were brought out freezer cold
and the beers served with a thick skein of ice on their sides.
Jars of homemade horseradish sat for sale on a front corner table.
And the fried bologna sandwich was still “Almost Famous”
and came with a side.

Fellows would sit in the quiet bar in the mid-afternoon,
which stood halfway down a brick, tree-lined
neighborhood of narrow working-class homes,
with the Union Headquarters just up the street,
and a guy selling farm produce from the back of a truck
parked a block or so away
where the crossroads met before the bridge
across the Muskingham into Marietta.

I enjoyed my first fried bologna sandwich here
and haven’t ordered anything else, since.
You sit back and watch the TV and barmaids;
meet with friends.
Currently, one barmaid has a circular maze tattoo
on her right outer thigh.
To struggle with it over five seconds
would be considered leering,
so I’m toying with the idea of taking a photo
and solving the problem at home.

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Marietta Home Tour

Who would have imagined such culture and beauty

behind the façade of Appalachia?

Regal, slender, grey-haired matrons glide through homes

of original rooms with ten-foot ceilings of original plasterwork relief,

original iron fireplaces, original heavy pocket doors, arched windows, inlaid floors,

spiraling staircases and then on back to the remodeled kitchen and den,

blazing with light and color, cooking islands, and built-ins, flat screen TVs, gas ranges

and subzero refrigerators and then out onto the screened-in, bright, airy patio

overlooking a spacious backyard with a 150-year-old oak, a hanging swing

and carefully tended gardens, all quiet and tranquil on an avenue

that is brick and broad and tree-lined with branches that interlock overhead.

Then, of course, across the street

the scrawny homeowner with his shirt off,

waist length white beard and ponytail

is mowing his small patch of lawn

with a sputtering machine

on a  humid afternoon.

Even in the towns, it’s ridges and hollers,

ridges and hollers,

ridges and hollers…

like the refrain of an old fiddle tune

reverberating back generations.

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Wife Poem #62 / Dave Childers and The Carpenter Ants!

Last night we listened to
Dave Childers and The Carpenter Ants!
wail it in a deserted conference room
of a shuttered fifties era department store
in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
for ten bucks a head.

“Blood on the ceiling!”
“Blood on the walls!”
We chortled along with Dave
in a song about a double tavern killing
a couple counties away.

Then, “Run! Skeleton run!”
about a wife murderer
hunted down and buried on a ridge.
From time to time he’d rise from his grave
to head downhill into town.
Year after year, he continued
until eventually all that was left of him
was a skeleton.
The townsfolk would say,
“Go home, Bill.”

My wife usually does not burst into song.
But her eyes sparkled as we yodeled the chorus,
like squirrel tails waving
from bicycle handle bars.

At evening’s end, Dave thanked us for
“getting’ off your couches
to come down and listen.”

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STIRRINGS

There is a restlessness to Spring

There is impatience

A pacing of the floor

A tapping of the fingers

A watching of the clock

As days grow long.

There is a blinking of the eyes

A giddy green

Erasing memories of

Winter’s chill.

The stomach churns.

The skin itches.

There is a longing to remember

What seems long ago

Forgotten.

An urge to touch soft

Pussy willow fur.

There is a drive to sweep clean

Every crack and crevice

Holding signs

Of winter’s gloom…

A moving of priorities

From inside

Now, to out.

A folding up of

Woolen grays and browns;

All traded for

Crisp pinks and denim blues.

There is a warmer side

To this house now

Where new dreams grow-

Where hope and seedlings stretch

In yellow rays;

Where purple finch

And sparrows

Nest in rolled up awnings,

And shell- armored hatchlings peck,

Impatient on this day,

To make their way

Toward sun.

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Devouring Cold Watermelon in This Anonymous River Town

Big, oblong, and mottled green,

flat and faded yellow on the bottom

where they’ve sat in the field, heavy with promise –

they wobble in the back on the drive home

and respond with a ripe ‘crack’ as they’re sliced open.

You can eat a car trunk full of all that water and fiber;

fill up for a few calories and practice wild gluttony.

The land never felt so generous as you gaze across those green orbs

in a hazy summer field  wavering in the sun.

And as the juice dribbles from your lips onto the thirsty soil,

you know it’s true that only a fool

would pass by this area’s fine, vine ripened produce.

In a river bottom town,

half a watermelon should sit in the fridge

nearby a dozen cold beers, or you simply

do not have the supplies to be neighborly.

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Not down by the river but on top of the hill.

My father had a thing about floods and moving every spring.

He knew the river and its treacherous ways.

On the front of the hill I could look down and see the whole town.

It was God-like.

I watched big iron trains as they belched sulfurous smoke.

It followed the staggering tracks, wheels squeaking,

cars swayed back and forth until it was out of sight.

In the distance I could hear the steam whistle as the train crossed the bridge

into West Virginia.

I watched barges shoved by paddle wheel boats up the river to Pittsburgh

Or down to Cincinnati.

Once I saw a war ship coming down the river from a boat yard in Pennsylvania,

it was a sight I never forgot.

I sat on the wall and watched the city streets in the distance, lined with giant trees.

The high school, the court house, the park.

On Sunday mornings the GONG of the big iron church bells echoed

to the top of the hill and gave me chills.

The property on the front of the hill belonged to the wealthy.

Doctors, dentists, factory owners all had built giant three story

Victorian homes. They rose like castles and peered down at the town.

They had wrap around porches with wicker furniture, stained glass windows,

and hand made iron fences wrapped around manicured lawns.

Further back were the common folks. They lived in plain houses made

for comfort. My father and grandfather built our house. It was warm and dry

and never failed to keep us safe and happy.

I learned at an early age the greatest things in life are not things.

On the hill I was taught how to work. I learned about love and death, about friends,

and sometimes enemies. It was the place I grew up, the place I called home.

Nellie’s poems are published in her book, Proof Of My Existence.

The post The Stomping Grounds appeared first on Clutch MOV.

parallel-pointing weathervanes,

from this distance motionless

(try to see the hour hand move).

Rusted sculptures, light-absorbing

chestnut, all thews and strength

born in fire and sparks, roaring heat,

now oxidizing (the weather’s sluggish flame).

Their necks gracefully arced downward,

their mouths upon the fibrous meal.

Their straight legs, their

swarthy flanks against the turf.

They are statuesque and emblematic

of times past, of days of

sweat and muscle, brisk aromas,

dust, leather,

shouts.

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