Dutch Treats

Chiquita

Many of you have written: what have you been doing, where have you been, what did you read? Well, actually, we may have imagined that you asked those questions. Whatever. We have been traveling and then re-entering.

While we were away, all hell broke loose: earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, and Africa & the Middle East erupting in popular revolts.  We are once again at war, this time in Libya, although we are calling it every other name in the book in ways that would make Orwell give a little "told you so" nod.

One morning, it happened to be March 19, the 8th Anniversary of Shock And Awe, we sat on the porch, watched Chiquita move about, and read Kay Ryan, American Poet Laureate 2008-2010. We found one poem that seemed more than apt for our world at the moment, or perhaps, at any moment: Here it is:

Dutch 

Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations

in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch

behind
badly cracked
dike systems

attached

by the thumbs
their wide
ballooned-pantsed rumps    
up-ended to the
northern sun

while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.

Can this be said any better? We do not think so.

On another morning, shortly before we left, our friend Dunmore Townes III stopped by to rock and chat on the porch. Mr. Townes is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Saint James, and upon leaving he gave us this as yet unpublished poem:

The Island Men Are Walking


The island men
are walking
in the morning,

"Flat-bed" Island Work Truck

north and
south
along Bay Street.

each stride,
a stanza
written on stone.

The island men
    are walking,

high tide
    and low.

I want to walk
like these island men,

slow, or near to slow,
arms pulling
in their own arcs
to their own time.

I want a walk
to put the capital "D"
in Dignity.

I'll get
where my feet
are going

when they
want to
take me.

The island men
are walking
in the morning,

not with a purpose,
but purposefully.




Ed Note: Dutch is from Say Uncle, 2000 Grove Press, New York. Copyright 2000 by Kay Ryan
The Island Men Are Walking is Copyright 2011 Dunmore Townes III.