.
Dad and I
Our sessions last an hour or two at most,
for we get through them just as fast as can
be managed, trying not to stir the ghost
of hurts supposed to help me be a man.
When Dad was young, he knew exactly what
the world was all about: he took a chance
and ended up with me, then hammered shut
my bedroom door when won’ts were phrased as can’ts.
We have a beer together every year
or so, two men who never hug each other;
He tells me that he’s glad I’m not a queer—
but if I am, say nothing to your mother.
We end our conversation trading handshakes
while Mom prepares the sausages and pancakes.
.
.
Lost in Boston
—a true story
They sent me out to do a bit of work
At someone’s garden in Jamaica Plain,
And on the way I nearly went berserk.
The signage and the signals were insane;
The mazy traffic-flow was Pollockesque,
With one-way arrows pointing me to where
I didn’t want to go. A boring desk
Job in the suburbs seemed, right then, a fair
Exchange for such a torturous ordeal.
At last I reached the designated yard
Where my express assignment was to heal
A decade of neglect. It wasn’t hard,
Because a plant wants nothing but to grow.
I headed back before it turned too dark
To see, but I got lost again: In low,
At rush hour, I was mired near Fenway Park.
What dreadful urban hellhole was I lost in?
None other than the Labyrinth of Boston.
.
.
The Cobwebs at McSorley’s
On the brink of falling into a dark cauldron
of wholly unwelcome self-examination,
with his usual disdain for anything maudlin
or trite (unless of wholesome Irish persuasion)
he wolfed a few slices of cheese and dragged his bones
to where his drinking buddies were certain to be
at that hour. The lot of them were his epigones
When it came to drinking really seriously,
but able talkers and listeners nonetheless.
The ritual alternation of light and dark
was a lustral blessing for the palate from glass
mugs that were constantly rinsed and refilled each work-
day, and for simple hunger there were liverwurst
and ham sandwiches sold at cost. Professional
ballplayers, depending on the standings, were cursed
or lauded, and sometimes there was emotional
discussion of great ideas, like when they asked
him how come he suddenly gave up drinking
single malt whiskey and, frowning at the sawdust
on the floor, he said that spirits triggered thinking.
.
.
C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
Although I’ve never driven in Boston, I can easily identify with this poem because I can get lost anywhere, and am much more likely than most to get flummoxed — or panic — when I come to a detour or any unexpected traffic situation. I love your description of the “Pollockesque” traffic signage. I was in the passenger seat when my husband drove through New York City, and I’ve kept my vow never to drive there. I guess I’d better add Boston to my no-drive list! Your poem paints a frustrating scene but is nevertheless quite entertaining.
Only God can explain, Cynthia, what I am doing anywhere near the city of Boston. Don’t go there! It’s now run by Mayor Woe, and things are not getting better. NYC is currently signing its own death warrant, and I hope never again to drive there, either.
These are three finely crafted and intelligent poems. The first is personal, and in the short space of a sonnet gives a world of information about a fraught father-son relationship. The second quatrain is especially effective.
The second is a narrative that manages to combine traffic problems with gardening! Only Kip could do that. By the way, Boston (like New York) is an old colonial town and therefore its original streets are not laid out in a grid. The same is true for London, which is a driver’s ultimate nightmare.
The third is more complex — but since I have been to McSorley’s more times that I can count, many things were familiar: the sawdust floors, the light and dark beers, the cheese slices, the all-male clientele.
Egad, Joseph. And here I had set out to write poorly sexual crafted and stupid poems. In the first we have a “homophobic” father who isn’t quite sure of his son’s sexual proclivities and who projects his attitudes onto his wife. Many years ago, Scoutmasters would tell us that “can’t” means “won’t.”
Gardening is always combined with traffic problems, unless the gardener only works at home. For the past week I have had to deal with construction delays on my way to a project in Winchester. I would not be surprised to learn that they still dump the night soil from their bedpans out onto Boston’s streets and alleys.
I inhabited McSorley’s mostly in the 1970s, when a big mug of really good beer went for about 35 cents. It’s a real place with a long history:
https://mcsorleysoldalehouse.nyc/
And do you remember the ropy dust-laden cobwebs that hung from every wall fixture, including framed photographs? Talk about atmosphere.
It wasn’t just the cobwebs. They had a long stretch of wire on which there hung wishbones from every turkey on every past Thanksgiving, and the story was that they went back to the Civil War.
C.B, I’ve only been to Boston once and distinctly remember the effort to leave the city at rush hour. It was nuts! Horns whaling, etc. Thankfully I was just a passenger. I love how you rhyme “lost in” with “Boston”.
Once is enough, Cheryl, even for passengers. I felt lucky to make it home.
Three interesting poems, C.B., almost as diverse in approach as in subject matter. The parent from. he’ll theme is poignantly handled–maybe John Wayne sitting down with Montgomery Clift or Dustin Hoffman.
On Boston, where I last drove 15 years ago on my way to an appointment that turned out to be located 3-4 blocks from where I was given to understand (and so I missed it altogether of course): it does, as Joseph points out, have the excuse of having grown up long before the automobile was conceived (unlike Toronto or Berkeley, where the aim is simply to torture motorists); why not outlaw personal vehicles there, and leave the driving to bus drivers et al–those stoics or maniacs with nerves of steel? Could it be done, or would Boston just go to he’ll in a handbasket faster than you say it currently is?
McSorley’s is great: it reminds me both of “Killigrew’s Soiree,” a song Burl Ives used to sing (for topic) and the rhythmic effect of Balkan folk dance music: it seems to me you are meticulous in creating a devil-may-care good time.
If you had tasted what they served in those mugs, Julian, then you would understand everything.
These all display the intimacy I find throughout your poetry: personal reflections on personal experiences, yet seeing something in them worth telling the world about. “Dad and I” doesn’t need to be an actual portrayal of your relationship with your father — it is real enough to many and speaks to father-son relationships even among those with a different relationship with their fathers.
“Boston” spoke to me personally, having driven there myself and been mesmerized by its “mazy,” “Pollackesque” (great one!) streets choked with traffic — such a far cry from the grid-patters favored in the Midwest (and which our geography accommodates).
“The Cobwebs” gives us some vivid imagery, and a fun and punchy end, with (I think) a pun on “spirits.”
I underestimated my father to the end, Adam, to my eternal regret, but the foregoing was nothing like any conversation I ever had with him, because there were no such issues between us.
Boston speaks to me personally also, and I am always insulted.
Cobwebs share a quality with cockroaches, in that everybody has a few of them, whether they admit it or not.
“Lost in Boston” gives me a true sense of recalling my seven years in Cambridge. I didn’t have a car until near the end of those years, but the few excursions driving to my sister’s place in Dorchester resulted in my only encounters with traffic signs I simply could not interpret. Before that, the maze was the bus-and-subway combinations that got me where I wanted to go, but with no mappable idea of how it had happened.
Sad to say, my dad didn’t last long enough for us plan or accomplish regular meetings as adults, but there was just one at a Cambridge restaurant shortly before my wedding, in which I and my husband-to-be learned more of him than I had known during the time growing up at home in Florida.
Your poems are usually down-to-earth, C. B., and I enjoyed that quality with these, intensified by your ability to touch pertinent memories.
Perhaps, Margaret, we can collaborate on a poem with the title “Umbrage in Cambridge”.