Among the poems I wrote each day during National Poetry Month in April is the following trilogy poem set... where else?... in New Jersey. I consider this my "retirement poem," as I wander the state these days without any 9-to-5 commitments:
My Days as an Idle King (A Trilogy)
Part 1. Odyssey in Rural New Jersey
I begin a 10-hour journey
Past the intersection
Where my first girlfriend lived.
I recall, decades ago,
How my heart would skip a beat
At the magical right at the light.
Today, a half-man guards
The driveway of a neglected shop.
He wears protective goggles,
Under a logoless baseball cap,
His hands buried in the pockets
Of worn and baggy black clothes.
A sign overhead heralds
My arrival to “DENT WIZ”
In block red letters,
Except for a faded shadow
In shape of the fallen letter “N.”
Part 2. Sussex County
Past neglected farm buildings
To the north and west
Stands an abandoned church.
Surrounded by abandoned graves,
And a traffic sign:
Thou shalt not park here.
Past “here,” I cross a one-lane bridge
Leading to Fairy Tail Forest,
Theme Park and Venue,
Shuttered until Memorial Day,
With only one other car,
A Cadillac for sale, in the lot.
I continue travels on Route 206,
Past the now-gated stone ruins
Of St. Paul’s Abbey.
To Yetter’s Diner,
Which serves breakfast all day.
Eggs over easy, bacon, rye toast.
What Dad would have ordered,
If he were alive.
Part 3. Ulysses, Made Weak by Time
Returning home,
My cats don’t acknowledge me.
Stretching and yawning
In the dying slivers of sunshine
Where they passed their day,
And warmly ignore me.
Until their stomachs remember
It’s time to eat.
I have no suitors to slay,
I am only a hero
To the tiny mouths I feed,
With only one-way bridges before me.
"My Days as an Idle King" refers to the opening lines of Tennyson's "Ulysses." This isn't my first attempt at a poetic trilogy set in the Garden State. Nor is it my first swing at a pretentious title or subtitle.
I've played with and re-edited the following poem over the years... in the spirit of French poet and philosopher Paul Valery, who famously said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
The subtitle of "New Jersey Trilogy" really belongs to "Lolita," a favorite book... before I had daughters. I plead "maturity," both in having another view of the book these days and in shamelessly using its subtitle. T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." Or, as interpreted by Steve Jobs years later: "Good artists copy; great artists steal."
The final stanzas below are set in a favorite place, overlooking a favorite city, immortalized by a favorite poet, William Carlos Williams, who remains a favorite poet as I "grow old and grey and full of sleep."
New Jersey Trilogy, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male
1. Thunder Road Revisited
THE SCENE
Annabel, my wife of 35 years, scans People magazine after sunset in our suburban living room. A song begins: six verses and a bridge.
A screen door slams in the distance,
while, under the spotlight of a table lamp,
Annabel sprawls across her favorite chair.
Her right leg hangs over the armrest,
like Hyman Roth in “The Godfather: Part 2,”
a movie we saw long ago when we lived across the river.
On this night, Annabel is reading
that Julia Roberts’ favorite lyrics
are from a Springsteen song.
Show a little faith,
There’s magic in the night.
You ain’t a beauty but, hey, you’re alright.
“He could only have written that
when he was young,” says Annabel.
“It’s filled with...” she pauses... “irrational passion.”
So I look her in the eye,
cross the room to her side and turn out the light,
revealing an ordinary night.
Annabel raises a curious brow.
I bow to steal a kiss... and take her by the hand.
“Baby,” I say, “let’s go for a drive.”
2. Gatsby in Paramus
A year later, after Annabel died,
I wait alone for my eye exam in the showroom
of Cohen’s Fashion Optical at the mall.
Surrounded by 100 sets of spectacles,
I begin to write a poem
about my life and my bride.
When a man with a blood-stained hole in his back
materializes from behind me,
sits right beside me, and spies my draft.
“It’s about my darling Annabel,” I explain.
“I know,” the man replies, his breath stinking of death,
“But I wouldn’t ask too much of her…”
He gestures toward a flickering spectral shade
under a fluorescent green Ray-Ban display.
“I’ve learned, Old Sport, that you can’t repeat the past.”
“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can,”
I cry, incredulous and defiant,
in the face of 200 vacant billboard eyes.
Why, I possess the power to conjure
when I write.
When I write,
when I write,
Annabel’s ghost can be revived.
3. Scenic Overlook at Garret Mountain
This is a dangerous place to stand:
Cliffside in Paterson, in the descending dusk.
Past the highway at my feet, across the Hudson,
a dizzying view materializes in the Emerald City skyline:
I see… a housefly… alight…
on my Annabel’s thigh.
It’s 18 miles and 40 years ago,
yet through the window of memory,
I clearly see my bride languidly napping in the bedroom
of our old apartment in New York.
The fly rubs its hands, obsessed, plotting its next move,
until shooed in a flash by a dismissive twitch of her flesh.
Decades disappear, just as fast,
as cars on Route 80 flee to the West.
I show a little faith.
I face to the East.
Blinding orgastic lights cast shadows
on that fresh green breast of the New World.
I catch my breath on this precipice,
with wounds dark and deep.
40 years later,
filled with irrational passion for Annabel.
I still watch her while she sleeps.
