March Comes In

March comes in like a lion at times,
with winds that swirl ’round
and take winter’s leaves off into the neighbors’ yard.
Crocuses have bloomed
and daffodils smile at passersby
while children revel in the lukewarm weather,
getting their shoes muddy and covering their pants with grass stains.

March comes in like a lamb at times,
with sunshine and billowy clouds,
chasing the dull winter colors away,
replacing them with blues and yellows and greens and reds.
Children play outside –
riding bikes, flying kites,
shooting BB guns at robins
(after all kids ARE kids) –
while trees and bushes burst forth quickly,
sprouting in haste to meet Mother Nature’s schedule.

March is a month of change,
the time of the spring equinox, when winter melts away.

I met you in the month of March,
looking for a change of pace,
a break from the doldrums of winter.
Although our meeting of the minds was brief,
I feel I’ve known you far longer than a few short weeks.
Perhaps we’ve met somewhere before (in another time).
If that is true,
I hope we had as much fun then as we have had now.
I’ve truly enjoyed the moments we’ve shared
(though the moment were spent in front of a CRT,
not conducive to the formation of happy moments),
and I imagine you enjoyed them, too.

March leads to April and April to May
when winter’s blahs have long passed away.
Spring leads to summer and summer to fall
when winter’s bleak nights will soon appear;
our friendship was brief
(too short, I’m afraid) but one I will long hold dear.

18 March 1987

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In One Life

We have played together on the plains of Agape, we have sailed the seas of Eros with our lovermates.  We have experienced the world of reality, we have thought of each other at inconvenient times and yet…all of this I would exchange for one fantasy, that I could be more than one person, and spend the length of every life with just one person to share (unrestricted, unencumbered, non-self-conscious) all of my thoughts, hopes and dreams.

Can you imagine existing in a thousand different lives?

In one life, I would wander the world with Amy Easter, the woman who lived in the top floor apartment in the Victorian house on Laurel Avenue in the student slum area of Fort Sanders in Knoxville, Tennessee.  We would spend our waking hours looking for mischief, mushrooms and marijuana.  We would walk up to a stranger in a bar and ask if he/she wanted to fuck, no strings attached.  We would break Coke bottles and carve shapes on our arms.  We would go from odd job to odd job, wearing freaky clothes and lying through our teeth to get what we want, turning to petty thievery when necessary.

In one life, I would follow Joey Francis to Paris and live in the same
building that Henry Miller lived in during his Anais Nin days.  In the middle of the day, we would work on the study of French music in the 17th Century.  In late afternoon, we would retire to a cafe and watch the tight bodies walk by.  We would go to friends’ houses in the early evening and eat a three-hour dinner, then go dancing late into the night, picking a partner for the evening with whom we would wake up with in the late morning.  For kicks, we would go to Amsterdam for good hashish and strange sex.

In one life, I would browse the bluegrass state of Brenda Faye, the
broomstraw girl from a little town in Tennessee.  We would take time from antique shopping to enjoy afternoon tea in an out-of-the-way restaurant in Edinburgh to discuss the books we had finished the night before.  We would meet again a couple of weeks later to see the third installment of the Belfast street play, “The Life Not Yet Lived”, about Irish life without British rule or religious strife.

In one life, I would marry my year younger 15-year old girlfriend, Robyn
Ricketts, putting our first child in college when I’m 34 and our twelfth
child through college when I’m a 49-year old great-grandfather.  I would see three of my children win the Pulitzer Prize, three would be successful politicians and the rest would work in the same town as my wife and me.  I would end my working years as a greeter at Wal-Mart, hugging just about everybody who walks through.

In one life, I would complete my college degree at Georgia Tech, having
completed my Navy ROTC training, as a lieutenant marrying a young woman I met at a social at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta and retiring as an admiral.  Our three children would all grow up to be doctors, having completed their premed education at Emory University.

In one life, the girl who told me she loved me in third grade, Renee Dobbs, would not die in 5th grade.  We would spend our school years pushing each other to perfect grades, graduating from high school as the 4th and 5th academically best students.  We would go to the same college, just to keep an eye on each other.  We would marry people very much like the other and either live in the same town or spend a lot of time on the phone together, treating each other’s children as our own.

In one life, I would give Janeil all my attention, because I would not be
frustrated by all the other lives I was not living.

In one life, I would record all the thoughts and actions of the other lives,
periodically publishing the parallel lives on the Internet, inspiring a young Irish writer to pen the 30-day street drama, “The Life Not Yet Lived”.

In one life, I would spend all my time with someone who only liked bluegrass music, and we would travel across the country going to bluegrass festivals, playing duets, I on harmonica and he/she on fiddle or guitar (of course, I would write the lyrics and an occasional melody).

In one life, I would spend all my time with someone who only liked the blues, and we would travel across the country going to blues festivals, playing duets, I on harmonica and he/she on electric guitar (of course, I would write the lyrics and an occasional melody).

In one life, I would live next door to one of the great-great-great
grandchildren of one of my other lives, and we would talk humans’ obsession with linear time.  We would publish a mathematical treatise on the absence of the 4th dimension and not be appreciated until 7th great-grandfather of a friend of mine proved that he had proposed this theory to one of my 7th great-grandchildren.  Although genetic testing would prove him right, the mass media would not absorb the theory for another hundred years.

How would your life be different in this fantasy?  As you and I know, I have magical powers so I am giving you the gift of multiple lives now.  Will you know the difference after you read this?  Would you have known the difference?  As I said, this is your fantasy so do with it what you will.

– 7 March 2001

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King Cotton

While I walked upon the stubbled field
And squinted in the winter sun,
I wondered how to spread the news
That spring is soon a comin’.

I huffed it back into the barn
And grabbed a dirty burlap sack;
I reached inside and shoved my hands
Into raw cotton, soft yet firm.

Then I knew just what to do –
I’d spread the news both east and west
By giving all my non-farm friends
A little bale of cotton.

So now you have that tiny bale
And know when Southern farmers plant,
They look to heaven and they pray,
“The South shall rise again.”

— 25 January 1995