[lit-ideas] Sunday Twofer
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:01:52 -0700
Usually at this time of the year I enjoy my walk to work for an eight a.m.
three hour seminar. The birds are doing their thing, the weather can be
pleasant, there's a sense of possibility and vibrancy and change in the early
morning streets. But this week things briefly got a little strange. Lying on
the sidewalk were a pair of men's dress socks and some underpants. I ran
across a young woman sagging, in the fashion of the age, her trousers around
the bottom of her bottom. The trousers were lime-green and probably polyester;
she was a sagging version of Lee Trevino, circa 1970. And then, as I waited
for a light to change, I stood beside a woman who was shouting at her phone, as
people re currently wont to do, "And it's like...and I go like...and like...and
you should like... pull his admissions file." I briefly wondered what kind of
college might hire such a person, and then it came to me that her speech was a
piece with everything I'd encountered thus far, not worthy of further inquiry.
For Christy and Tom, retiring
at the exit here
if i said nothing
about tom and christy
no one would complain
for no one appointed me laureate
with all accoutering obligations
so i was thinking that might be the way
what with them being naturally very quiet men
and then up trotted these small thoughts
observed by a printmaking trout
fisherman who customarily
paints in shades of white and grey
two folk spread salt on a sidewalk
in a gesture that captures the spirit
the quotidian days of old age
it's one of my favorite drawings by tom
done from imagination i think
but if he told me he crept up on these two
keeping his hands clean
and like a hunter quietly sketched
possibly thinking of pulling a print
i'd ask his eyes
or watch his smile
and then i'd see
if truth therein
lies
christy's abilities
not only as a printmaker but as a cheerleader too
not literally of course
at least
to use one of his characteristic expressions
not to my knowledge
dressed in spandex and leaping all about
no
christy's serious abilities are inscribed
in pnca memory and lore
they're available for all to see
in the mazes of his work
and the engagement of his department
christy stands
like a crisp mark
like a straight shooter
like someone who is really quite
tall
the gap these two leave
is likely to be
less fishy
less salty
less hunter/gatherer-ish
less outdoorsy
less full-hairy
less boyish
possibly more noisy
we will miss them
we will lament
we will keen
we will wail
we will shout from the hilltops
our hip hop verses
and somehow
incredible though it may seem
we will carry on
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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