The Essential Wisdom of Cool Aunts

 A memory of Dorothy Gilmore

She ran the Rec Center on Rowan Street,

hosting booze-free youth nights 

spun from a jukebox and local bands. 

To me she was only Aunt Dot, 

but my friends remember Mrs. G, 

everyone’s cool aunt 

whose kitchen was always open 

to teens in need of commiseration, 

which was how she caught word 

of my early flirtation with Rio,

a mysterious pixie with lightning eyes 

who wore her skirts short and sweaters tight. 

I loved the rush of her wild allure 

and she was keen on my letter jacket – 

we might’ve made it work, 

but Aunt Dot was wise. 

I can’t recall her actual words, 

but still feel the inflection: 

You were made for so much more. 

The girl is not your kind. 

By which she could’ve meant ‘cool.’ 

I kept the jacket and lost the girl 

who would be old and gray by now, 

not an abuela who nods by the fire, 

but a wayward girl’s great aunt 

who weaves a spell from shadowed years 

to cast away the sting of tears 

and tame the fear her beauty bore: 

You’re so much more than meets his eye. 

The boy is not your kind. 

Grandpa Gilmore Left Me a Poem

I’d heard he earned a medal somehow 

late in the Great War, capturing a squad, 

or perhaps a platoon of German troops. 

Hell, he said, through plumes of blue smoke 

rising from an end-table ashtray littered 

with unfiltered Camels. Grandpa paused. 

The Friday night fights flickered.

We listened to the Gillette jingle 

as welterweights bounced in their corners. 

Hell, I was lost in the fog,  when a shell 

burst nearby. I like t'shit'm'britches –

a bell pierced the ring-side shouts –

so I jumped in the nearest trench 

which was full of … Granpa winked 

and shot a sly smile … full of the finest 

German gentlemen, who threw up 

their hands before I could raise mine. 

His husky laugh dissolved into coughs 

and I thought I heard scattered jeers 

as weary boxers clinched on the ropes, 

pounding to the final bell. 

Grandpa came home, but not quite 

whole, his left leg locked stiff for life. 

I’m sure he could've cursed with flair, 

but deferred for his bride. Tamed 

into temperance by stomach ulcers, 

he moved through his days with a dignified limp 

and always left a room laughing. 

We shared Grandpa’s jokes at his funeral – 

that was his gift to a too-solemn world. 

He'd left me a well-creased poem, 

a cheesy paean to partisan peace 

which I read to embittered fraternity brothers 

the week after Nixon squeaked in. I mouthed 

the earnest platitudes to weary groans, 

till eyeing our tidy Republican tribe, 

I channeled my grandpa, shot a sly smile,  

and landed the final lines –  I’ll hug your elephant 

and you kiss my ass. 

Here is a link to "The View from Grandma's Kitchen"

and here's a link to the post-election poem.

Awaiting Passage into Fall

When a Southern August lays on hands, 

a lush embrace of steamy weeks
sets in before the fall. 

Through waning days I run the dawn 
by tidy lawns refreshed with dew. 

Their scent and sparkle stir anew 

 
as memories reconstitute 
old seasons born so long ago 
in stain and sweat and schoolboy pride  

forged from summer football trials 
in heat and pads on high school fields 
that to young minds must surely yield  

triumphant Friday nights to come 
if only August days would end 
at last in break of fall. 

Those Southern rites of passage echo yet 
in aching muscles one-time strong. 
They burn inside my body  

decades on as by degrees 
the morning dark seeps into day 
and evening light melts away.  

Locked in August once again, 
the weeks pile up as all await 
the break of heat that snaps the spell  

while age and darkness creep, encroach, 
and claim their share of fading light 
for passage into fall.  

More poems of August:

Coming Home

Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

Weeds Have Names

Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

There is always a week in early August 

stuck in a musty fold of time, 

when the world spins in place 

and the season teeters on the brink 

as every August that ever was 

seeps in the marrow of a single day. 

I rise in darkness.

Damp air caresses my skin 

as I amble down empty streets listening to crickets.

Furtive songbirds molt in silence. 

A doe slips through the shadows of a streetlamp. 

The moon dissolves in a bank of haze. 

Morning dawns, gray-laden and soft, 

tucked with mushrooms, mold and rot, 

laced with dew-spun webs. 

The sodden hours slip by, dripping, 

yet in the dripping, never dry. But mist 

burns off by noon, and midday glares. 

As sun beats down on bare pavement, 

profane hawks shriek obscenities. 

A gang of crows loiters in the treetops. 

Oblivious gnats hurl their bodies 

at unguarded eyes. The world thrums 

with the jet-beat of cicada days. 

On a primal August such as this 

griffinflies stretched their foot-long wings 

to hunt Carboniferous swamps. 

Red-eyed raptors stalked Jurassic plains, 

and monster crocs lay in wait for Cretaceous prey. 

They ruled their own unchanging days.

The western sky blackens. Cool 

downdrafts shake the canopy. Limbs crack. 

A pack of storms sweeps through. 

Out my open bedroom window 

a sultry evening settles in. Soon, 

I think. Soon enough the season turns.

Soon enough it all moves on. I sleep 

with the distant night-song of dilophosaurus 

enveloped by ancient tree-tip strumming – 

she did – she didn’t 

            she did – she didn’t 

                         she did – she did – she did 

More poems of August:

Coming Home

Weeds Have Names

Awaiting Passage into Fall

August night sounds with katydids and dilophosaurus:

Dilophosaurus chasing Scutellosaurus-By ABelov2014 

(https///abelov2014.deviantart.com/) - 

https///abelov2014.deviantart.com/art/Dilophosaurus-603376947, 

CC BY-SA 3.0

Coming Home

My window fogs as we roll
through puddles and primordial mist
down the endless Atlanta tarmac
to the furthest perch in the terminal.

Our packed cabin disgorges the bleary
to the eternal tide of strangers
ebbing down the concourse,
all drawn toward home.

I lug a week’s worth of laundry,
small soaps and assorted toiletries
across a vast concrete car-scape
to the last long-term lot.

The way out is wide open.
Soon the city lights fade
in my rearview mirror. Silent
lightning paints the blackened horizon

 
like a short-circuiting strobe
as I push east, deep into Georgia.
I steer through sleepy towns.
At the ragged edge of midnight

I skirt a deserted campus
and turn down familiar streets.
A dripping redbud arches low
over my darkened driveway.

I cut the engine and pause
as the rhythmic hymn of katydids
and the rasping peep of tree frogs
wash my travel-wracked body.

I hear the soft call of a barred owl
haunt the high limbs of a dying oak
down by the river. My skin tingles
and the bones of my soul sigh, home.

More poems of August:

Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

Weeds Have Names

Awaiting Passage into Fall

In Days of White Clover

Mid-spring comes to small town South 

when Chinaberry bursts in purplish hues 

beside abandoned homesteads.

Honeysuckle scents the soft air 

and wisteria drapes weary trees 

with a heavy lavender shroud.

Weeks break in fragrant waves. 

Fields that featured buttercup 

streak yellow ragwort now.

Time keeps the spring flowers 

from blooming all at once. 

Time keeps our ghosts apart.

These are the days of white clover  

when raucous bands of dandelion 

stalk the slopes of suburban lawns. 

This is the time the tanager returns 

flitting red through high branches 

amidst a hundred shades of green. 

This is the season of tender leaves

when cool winds sift the canopy 

with a soothing woodland sigh.

The world teems with calls and songs, 

lilts and chortles, wheets and teeters, 

chucks, clucks, caws and cheers.

Now is the time of new life. Why 

should I keep from singing?

The Reluctant Judgment of Gaia

For three transgressions of humankind, and for four,

    I would not turn away my care, 

but I cannot cancel your karma 

    nor soften your self-affliction, 

for you sold a species for silver –

    parakeets for feather hats, 

rhino horns for hangover pills; 

    you carved tusks and called it art. 

You gutted the mountains for copper, 

    cut forests for paper cups, 

pillaged the living hills for coal 

    and filled the hollows with scree. 

You scoured the earth for baubles and gems, 

    plowed and fenced the bison plains, 

encroached on the home of the mountain gorilla, 

    and poached the lands of the poor. 

You drained the ancient aquifers 

     to till the edges of deserts; 

you pimped your crops with exotic genes 

    and sowed the soil with poison. 

You fattened your cattle in pits of filth, 

    your pigs in seething pens. 

You stuffed their guts with feed and drugs 

    and drained their blood for meat. 

From drippings and stench to kitchens, 

    a grim resistance awakes.

Soon a mutant strain breaks free 

    and mean fevers sweep the globe. 

You who live in the riches of Babylon 

    flush in the soaring of stocks, 

forever whoring your mother for more –

    for you, the fire, the plague, the drought. 

Guard your hearts, you orphans of Eden – 

    a vicious spirit inflicts the earth 

and you are the conflagration. 

    Ashes of continents curse your kind. 

Yet oh how I’d gather you back in my garden 

    and wash away your pain. 

I would nurture my bright-eyed progeny 

    but you, beloved, you would not.

SARS-Cov-2 illustration
created at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention)

A Prayer for the Dark Ages

May descendants escape 

our cradle of light 

and ride the vacant winds of space 

to feed on diamond cores of cold stars 

and neutron gems 

spinning in eternal night. 

May kindness survive the crossing.

May something ethereal 

harvest horizons 

of black holes. 

May their minds have a word for hope.

May their lives enrich the expanse of time 

and rock the void 

with joy. 

May their songs express the subtle shades 

and endless ways 

of love. 

When their souls dissolve 

into darkness 

and their endless era ends,

may a trace of their being bless the deep. 

May grace pervade the empty realm 

and in the Omega remember our lives, 

we who were tethered in time.

Spring Before Leaf-Out

Athens, Georgia

Signs belie the still-bare branches
arching the hardwood forest with an airy weave.
Can you hear the hickory clear his throat?
Inside the shaggy bark, cells repair.

And pipes revive. Buds swell the tips of twigs.
High on a rough trunk, resurrection ferns go green.
Maples blush tawny red.
Spring seeps inside the trees.

My calendar shows a winter scene
with numbers tucked in ordered rows
but birds know better.
Did you catch the morning chatter?

Out of darkness, cardinals sing
and wrens respond with small bird bluster.
Can you hear the new tenor? 
Spring is in the daybreak song.

The dirt below us lives –
can you feel the tremor?
A scattering of small flowers push white
through the brown litter blanket.

Here, the bloodroot. Here, hepatica.
There, the hairy bittercress.
Golden ragwort bud purple by a fungus-crusted log.
Spring comes first to humble lives.

It creeps in cold.
It calls you from your long torpor.
Will you kneel down by tiny flowers?
Will you tread lightly the altar of earth?

Hepatica, by Don Hunter

Bloodroot, by Don Hunter

Golden ragwort

What Haunts the End of the Anthropocene

There will be rats, of course,
rooting through palm fronds
by the shores of the Bering Sea.

Balmy air will soften the Arctic night
as glaciers of Greenland melt into sea
and tundra crumbles to methane and mud.

This is a world devoid of puffins
where phantom bears hunt vanished ice
and ghosts of narwhal haunt the coast.

The land is a banquet for buzzards and blowflies.
Abandoned cities are concrete reefs
where starfish sift through barnacled ruins.

Out past the algal-clouded lagoons,
past bleached coral coated with slime,
plastic islands choke the ocean.

Gaia swoons. Her fever peaks.
Her skin is cracked with asphalt scabs,
her veins convulsed with biocides.

Extinction sweeps the earth again
on the cutting edge of the Anthropocene.
Beyond the bottleneck, coming soon –

the Kingdom of Jellyfish,
the Realm of the Cockroach,
the Golden Age of Fungi.

Image by Andreas Weith - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0