About That Poem: 'Byzantium in Jersey'

My grandfather, 1969, Budd Lake

This is the poem I read at the S.P.E.A.K. open mic in March at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ.

I began my reading by reciting from memory the first part of a favorite poem, "Sailing to Byzantium" by Yeats. The workshop before the open mic was about structure in poetry, and I have always appreciated the subtle structure of Yeats' masterpiece -- 10 beats per line with an ab/ab/ab/cc rhyme in each of its stanzas.

I was also pleased to read in Robert Pinsky's autobiography "Jersey Breaks" that "Sailing to Byzantium" was a favorite of his too.

So, with apologies to those two great poets, here's the full text of my homage:

Byzantium in Jersey

 

This, my grandfather, in his Sunday best:

a cigarette dangling from its holder,

a tattered suit, a worn Italian vest,

with me at his side, decades less older.

He does not hold my hand. There is no rest.

He lectures as we walk, points my shoulders

to Monarch butterflies in flight toward me

along the shores of Budd Lake, New Jersey.

 

This, a back country road, is my classroom:

milkweed, honeysuckle, red columbine,

hummingbirds, spotted touch-me-nots in bloom,

blue robins’ eggs, goldenrod, dandelions.

My grandfather names them for me, assumes

I will remember that sparrow, that vine,

the chicory, those edible lilies,

the mew of mimicking catbirds we see.

 

Like the sage I loved, these vanished from me.

 

I live in the suburbs, reminisce now

about ancestors. One Sunday, I walk

the Hackensack riverbank in a drought.

A murder of crows chase a gyring hawk,

then roost in the sun on a golden bough.

Hearing their echoing caws, I pause, stalked.

This, I know, is my father’s father’s song

of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Reflections From Across the Pond

Abbey Road

Bear with me... and hold this thought as you read this post: FADING IS AN ART FORM.

The two photos atop this page are so "me": doing what everyone else does at the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London.

My daughter obliged by taking a photo. Then she accompanied me into the gift shop, where I bought a souvenir Abbey Road Studios pen and added my own graffiti to the outside entranceway.

"Bob was here," I penned, adding a cartoonish drawing of a penguin, as if that made me unique.

In fact, the voice inside my head and my daily interaction with others remind me that I am quite ordinary, and that perhaps my life may never leave a mark. In fact, as a man of a certain age, I have lately felt invisible.

---------

We stayed at the Kimpton Fitzroy;
my daughter picked this hotel because
it would remind me of The Dakota in NYC,
where John Lennon lived

I had never been to London before, and this trip was a gift from my daughter.

Her friends are travel enthusiasts and well-versed in the history of the Titanic, so we were to meet them a few days later in Southhampton, where we'd board the Queen Mary 2 for a leisurely voyage home to New York.

I love New York, but I fell in love with London, too. I've sprinkled a few of my iPhone photos from London here in this text.

The city is bigger and more complicated than I had thought. My daughter arranged for us to see two plays (one at Shakespeare's Globe), visit three museums, stop in several parks and pubs, sail a gondola in Little Venice, take a whirlwind tour on a double-decker tour bus, and take a scenic spin on the giant London Eye ferris wheel.

My daughter and I on the London Eye, with its view of Big Ben

We topped it off by having an elegant tea with one of her friends at Fortnum & Mason the afternoon before we took the Underground to Waterloo Station to catch the train to Southhampton.

I love my daughter very much, and I felt somewhat nostalgic among her young friends. You could say, as Sir Paul once sang, that it became apparent to me that my daughter and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

The British Museum courtyard (with a quote from Tennyson on the floor:
"and let thy feet / millenniums hence / be set in midst of knowledge");
groundlings gathering before a performance at Shakespeare's Globe

Adding to worries about my advancing age, I was on the cusp of celebrating another birthday, and I kept receiving texts and emails, even... magically... while in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean... about my 50th high school reunion in New Jersey.

I could not attend the DePaul Catholic High School reunion because our "ocean liner" (the Queen Mary 2 is defiantly not a "cruise ship," and I intend to post separately about that experience) was not due to narrowly pass beneath the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and dock in Brooklyn until the morning after the event.

Camden Market and under the Westminster Bridge

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So how was the reunion?

A high school friend texted me: "The reunion was incredibly interesting and disorienting and fun and unusual. Sooooo many 15-year-old classmates comfortably settled deep, deep, deep in my memory having to pair up with their 68-year-old future selves! It was wild!"

My response: "It's unreal to reconcile the photos to the people I remember. I'm glad you were there. I often still feel 15 inside, although on the verge of turning 68, I also sometimes feel like I'm gradually disappearing to others… so I treasure connection all the more!"

My friend's wonderful reply: "I think fading is an art form. From the bright beam of a lighthouse to the astonishing flashes of the firefly, we all play a wonderful part in this life thing :)!"

That's it! My new mantra. No longer "invisible," but "fading." I should live my life in harmony with the first principles of biology and physics: EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE.

So I vow to embrace this feeling as my "birthday month" comes to an end. I concluded the chat with my friend with this haiku, stealing a phrase from Sylvia Plath:

fading as we age

is our art before we die,

like everything else.

Piccadilly Circus, reminding me of New York

Home now and feeling renewed and inspired, I wrote a poem, in the form of a glose, to honor a treasured memory of high school: studious, shy, awkward me in an improbable Latin class in Wayne, NJ, with only two other classmates, Michael Brown and Harry Maronpot.

Both their names appeared on the reunion organizers' list of people they could no longer locate. I dedicate this post to my daughter, to my artistic friend, to Michael, to Harry, and to my teacher, Sister Billy Jo.

A Visit to the British Museum Among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows, Silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone, Watch me as I write in her memory: Sister Josephine Coleman I am closely watched in front of the Rosetta Stone by CCTV cameras in London, past the temples of Amazon and Nike, joking that my daughter should marry a centaur, commenting on the elaborate tombs. “All the kings are now footnotes,” I say, like me, foolishly trying to cheat death. “In a way, they do get an afterlife here,” my equestrian daughter replies, among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows. I am dizzy to discover Elgin Marbles of the Parthenon here instead of in Greece. I am dizzy to view the mosaics of fish recovered from the houses of the now-dead rich. I am dizzy by what remains of the past: Kashan pottery, Ilkhanid lustre tiles, tapered glass tear holders, archer’s rings, ornate tableware depicting sea deities, white-gold Meissen porcelain, Bohemian export glass, silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone. “Consider how much bigger the world is than you.” These words haunt me from an empty tomb. I hear the voice of my Latin teacher, a nun, in a classroom mausoleum next to the AV room at DePaul High School in New Jersey. My teacher died decades ago, soon after the London Bridge was moved and long before her name could be fossilized on the ether of the Internet. Watch me as I write in her memory: I offer an ordinary quatrain written in indelible electrons, inspired by ghosts in a museum of how big the world now seems. I invoke her name in the footnote of this glose, this poem. I bestow on her the afterlife of a king: Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman --------- Just me, underneath a marker noting the Beatles' last live performance on top of this roof

Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Watching 'Star Trek' With My Father

On this day in 1966, "Star Trek" premiered on NBC TV. It was my father's favorite show, and we used to watch it together. I'm sure Dad secretly pretended to be Captain Kirk, and I loved to pretend Captain Kirk was my Dad.

I visited Dad's grave this weekend. He died nearly 19 years ago. I took this photo today near an ironically dead tree near his grave site in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Totowa, NJ, and I offer this poem in his memory.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday

It’s a Thursday-like Sunday morning in September 2024,

And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is 1,000 miles away from me

In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,

And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Suddenly, on the liquid crystal screen before us,

Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,

Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.

We slingshot around the sun

Fast enough to reverse time,

Arriving back in our TV room,

Where it’s a Thursday night in January 1967,

The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,

775 miles away from the storm.

He is still 1,000 miles away from me.

I am the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there and place a protective arm

That envelops my small body.

I whisper in my ear:

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” over and over again.

Until a tractor beam surrounds me and my past.

Its light absorbs us.

My grasp on myself dissolves.

As credits begin to roll, I am transported

To a Sunday morning in September 2024

By the otherworldly vessel of this poem.

This poem has taken control.

It has implanted an image that worms into my brain:

I cannot unsee my father.

He has become Captain Kirk at the conn.

In this strange new world,

He is changing my future forever.