WALKING TOUR: Poetry by Larry Eugene meredith

POEMS WRITTEN 1967-1969

TOUR STOPS I: COUNTRY ROADS

Mountain Mists

The mist of mountains

Seduces the heat of summer

From the wilted plains.

Seasons

The Spring breeze

Tiptoed through my hair

Barefoot.

It was then

I had first noticed

Fresh leaves.

I felt new.

Skipping through days of

Summer.

It was then

I had first noticed

Bare trees.

I soon took

A fall right into

Winter. 

Spring

A leaf in budding,

silently pushes the world

into a new Spring.

Strictly From Hunger

To be in hunger

Is as a tree in blossom.

It pains to be full.

Pretermitted Insufflation

Here the grain, the grass, the field;

There the woods, fence half concealed.

Here more than can be possessed.

Hidden treasure rare revealed.

The grains’ gold seems over run --

Buttery beams, melting sun.

Caught in freshest summer breeze

Is the place where I have come

To pluck watercress from a creek,

Amid seedy mustard and green leek.

Feathering my life like a nest.

Listening to time hardly speak.

Stars

I was standing at the start of night

Gazing at the stars.

I wasn’t thinking

About anything, except how bright they were,

Though they were not hot.

This bothered me.

And then I saw it shining there;

A bright warm star.

There was a man following my sight,

Seeing which of the stars I had chose.

When he saw the hot star he approached

Me and stood close at hand and looked up,

Toward the spread out sky and my choice.

“That ain’t a star.”

“What?”

And I turned at this impolite

Interruption into my peace.

“What?”

“It ain’t no star, that red one. It’s a Planet.”

“It looks like a star,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s just a dead planet.

It just seems a star.”

And since that time I have found that’s right.

I looked it up in books and it is

A planet. It was a false star that

Caught my eye, one that promised to be

Such a warm sun, but was a cold world

And not a star.

Turn now and see a facade of light,

A magic lantern where comfort beams.

It is built of tall spires and steeple.

Choirbirds hum an easy somber song

Of “Aren’t you Grateful?

 Aren’t you grateful for such a star?”

There is a cynic follows your sight,

Seeing which of the stars you have chose.

Then he sees the beam and he approaches

You and stands close at hand and looks up,

Toward the tall steeple of your choice.

“That ain’t no star.”

Illustration: stock photograph

Wind Images

What blustering visitor

Does the whispering wind

Present upon my windowsill?

Out upon the glowing glaze

Of greening grass

Atop the wooded hill,

Can that be the light

And tripping figure of brilliant hair

And careless ease?

My own true love?

Can it be her white-

Laced dress this night wind

Rustles with its breeze?

What dry and drifting dust

Do the dying breezes

Enfold beneath their mustard silt

Out under the growing haze

Of evening gas

Atop the stony hill?

Can that be the pale

Thinning figure of dull blighted hair

Dissolving within?

My own true love?

Can it be her white

Bones that this night breeze

Rustles with its wind?

TOUR STOPS II: TOWN SQUARES

Photo by Ronald W. Tipton

Janice

I lean to licorice sticks

Or butterflies,

And I see cream puffs

Clouding up the skies.

She sounds like jade,

Green and fresh as Spring.

Jasmine in the breeze;

Apples on a string.

Joy and jazz or just

A lazy afternoon

Of childhood.

With swing rides in June.

Romeo, asked Juliet,

What’s in a name?

Janice is summer lakes

And shady lane

Flood

Wind blowing silently

Veils today’s romance,

Sending leaves in a courting dance.

In begins to rain eventually.

It is giving seduction half a chance.

Then the pour begins to steam and to swell,

Like an ovenbird roasting upon hot coals.

It turns lumpish, it bloats, it swells like rolls,

And its friskiness breaks apart the spell,

Turning romance to nervous hems and haws.

It comes flooding, rushing and roaring down,

Obviously everything letting go,

Tolling bells and dousing fires. Now we know

What is the meaning of the thudding sound,

For in this seeping are the seeds we sow.

Booming down, it beats across all the land,

Swelling the belly of the pregnant streams,

Streaking the heaven with the labor screams.

As it grows we begin to understand

Just why dampness saturates our dreams.

Two I Have Known

There is the scratching of time ticking at the wall

Just out the window is a sky in tearful squall,

Inside the room is a doom stronger than the pine,

But it isn’t doom at all. It’s just the ticking time.

Sitting in her corner is May, the flower-girl,

Lost inside her weedy world of smoky-curl;

While nearby, drowning his life, sits a shot-glass Glenn,

Everything he ever had glugged down to have been.

Two I have known from another town.

Don’t look around.

They can’t be found.

Today, one of these twain has toked-up adrift,

Leaving the other aswim in whiskeys and ryes.

One is always chasing rainbows behind the clouds;

The other’s always hoisting toasts to dimming skies.

Railroad Blues

Railroad blues

Chuggin’ ‘round my mind,

All because

My switchyard baby

Left her engineer behind.

This engine’s been cut loose,

Left to smoke and pine,

While his rolling stock

Has rolled to another line.

Railroad blues

Got me down and out.

Railroad blues,

What the cryin’s ‘bout.

Railroad blues,

Station’s closed tonight,

All because

My switchyard baby

Has got herself ‘nother man.

This conductor got no punch,

Left alone to pine,

While his railroad’s struck

By the lover union line.

Railroad blues

Got me down and out.

Railroad blues,

What the cryin’s ‘bout.

To Stanley Stein or Swampland Barless Prison Blues

You have me in a cave as to save from the grave

YOU from my infection,

Because of a pale blemish that’s diminished the finish

Of my complexion.

I don’t know why this land to a man wants to ban

Me, a tainted fixation.

And don’t call me that word anymore, you’ve

Given me swampland barless prison blues.

You won’t allow me a wife or a life in the strife

Of my growing pockery.

And you put me down in the ground away from town

Under guard, lock and key,

Then you turn tail and run and you shun me, and son,

YOU call this democracy?

And don’t call me that word any more, you’ve

Given me swampland barless prison blues.

And your preachers preach the gospel

And they turn the people rather hostile

Then they collect for the hospital.

YOU call that Christianity?

And every gift that you give me

Is sterilized just to rib me

While you say you want to live. Gee!

YOU do that unanimously.

 

Then YOU wash your hands off

After waving me to please stand off.

After you’ve burned all the land off

YOU leave me anonymously.

While YOU go back home with your own all alone

Whispering where you’ve been,

Then YOU gasp at the rot at this spot and allow how

We aren’t owning much skin.

After which you sit back and get slack with a snack and

Go back asleep again.

And don’t call me that word any more, you’ve

Given me swampland barless prison blues.

Photograph of Stanley Stein from the International Leprosy Association

Library Spider

 Should spiders read?

This is a question

Raised seeing a spider

Spinning silk in a library.

One wonders if it wouldn’t

Just complicate life

If it should read.

But then why should

A spider even venture

To enter a library

Unless to seek more

Out of life than webs?

Go, silly spider!

Stick to your weaving,

For history and art

Are written on cobwebs

And we need spiders

To reweave the damage

That winds of ignorance

Can blow through our pages.

But if spiders read,

They might cease spinning

To scan some racy novel.

And why should knowledge

Die with spiders?

Illustration: unknown source

House We Live In

There is a building with columns of thickness.

Pretending to marble.

It stands proud and tall.

Is this some kind of building of distinction?

Take close notice.

It’s a funeral hall.

It is a symptom of this place

Where they worship the dying

And put on a pedestal

Those who have died.

Where they beat down the artist

And they cut off the thinker,

And even the genius

Must know how to hide.

Where you see silver snakes slither like lightning,

Stoking people on their mad morning dash.

Their purse full of cash and their hearts of cinder.

Burnt out people with

Minds whitened to ash

Illustration: Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes

TOUR STOPS III: CITY STREETS

A Large White Canvas With A Centered Black Splotch The Size Of A Quarter Which Sold At The Rittenhouse Square Clothesline Art Show In The City Of Philadelphia For The Sum Of Fifty Dollars In 1967

Only a dot

Until it got

A fifty spot.

Dat dot’s a lot!

Portrait of a Girl

The wall before

The girl is black.

The path in front is wet

As she tries

Another block.

Is the girl lonely?

Yet, she sits

Fingering a name,

Breath drawn taut.

One day too long.

The name is there she sought.

Illustration:source unknown