What’s the Hurry?
Copyright 2001 Quentin Baker
Val
It was a short life
(To the meter of “Old Dog” by William Stafford)
Up the gentle incline of Laguna,
Past modern hardware stores, Queen Anne condominium conversions,
A new church, A dilapidated three story ripe for urban renewal,
Except that the Japanese Senior Citizens and others are keeping
a tight hold on this that they have left,
Past the Victorians that line the street with elegance,
The trees shading the past just barely,
A past replete with soldiers ordering Americans into trucks.
Now, across Bush, the hill gets steeper.
Our breath comes harder.
You, Val, begin to lag behind,
Your nose experiencing a world impossible for man.
“Come, girl,” I say, “Come on, Val!” I slap my leg for emphasis.
She grins and beats her tail and catches up.
We make it to the Up Up Park, named so by children who liked it there very much
but not the climb
The walk levels off a bit.
There are trails and bushes and other undertails and wags and noses,
And never a fight because this is dogs’ public grass too,
Territory not at all a problem ever,
All “our place.”
And now the incline back toward St. Francis Square.
Why is it she slows so even down the streets,
Happy at the stop light on Pine?
“Come, girl,” I say, “Come on, Val!” I slap my leg for emphasis.
She grins and beats her tail and catches up.
And now I wonder what the hurry was.
I hardly ever go up those streets:
Once perhaps in six months or so.
The car’s the thing, booming back and forth, up and down,
making the orange with just the right spurt.
Waiting for a red, though, I glance my eyes about:
There’s that fat row of Mammy Pleasant’s fragrant eucalyptus;
There’s where that cat that hated a chase would lurk ‘til the last,
Then leap inches to spare through the barred window, open a cat’s heighth;
There’s where many times a smiling tourist stooped to pet a friendly
head and look at the person and his dog who really lived here;
There’s me.
For sure I wonder what the hurry was.
January 1990
Nurture
for Sarah Jean Baker Johnson
Long of face, weary of eye,
Later years’ lines hinted,
She plods across another day of mothering, an endless seeming way.
Milk at 5:30 a.m.
Then at 7:08
Again at 10:22
And at 3:00 or later if she’s lucky
Diapers stains and infant smells
And so and so on,
This day’s toe hitting next day’s heel,
Soundless screaming tedium straggles a twisting path.
No respite from those Belly pain cries,
Nor from his discomfort of being on his back on his side on his tum
or propped sitting sort of, pillow cushioned.
And only an occasional, barely learned smile to cheer her up,
To turn her face toward happier highways, different times.
I wonder, did Joseph take Jesus for a back or belly or donkey ride
up some trail to gain a spate of stillness
for the sleepless, beleaguered wife?
And did wood or cloth pacify his suck, suck, suck?
Thus does it matter little
That his birth was a grinding joy;
This tedious nurturing weighs her down,
Malaise asks the hardest question yet:
Will she do it?
Will this mother’s daughter take his hand ‘til his roads
diverge in that yellow wood?
We can only hope so
But never think it easy
To bring forth anyone who will make a difference.
December 1990
Luxury, Discovery
This morning, with the loud Seattle rain streaming against our window,
It is your feet and legs, your brow wrinkled with watching,
Kicking, kicking, pushing against my chest.
Yesterday it was your voice,
So strong the coos pleased everyone in earshot,
Especially yourself.
Tomorrow it will be your neck,
So stout, holding up that mighty head for minutes at the very least,
Preening unconsciously for my Pentax
Very pleased indeed with this miracle your body.
Happy times these:
Luxurious discoveries.
They bring us growth
Joy.
6:55 a.m., February 19, 1991
Footnote: as I read these words to Nolan, he listened with rapt attention as though
my voice was telling him everything he needed to know for now.
A Murderer
No need then to take a life,
Silence its voice
Strew its brains across the gutter
Shred its fibers into pulp
When bold Macbeth
Has done it for me:
I’ve heard his heart knocking at his ribs,
Staggered with him from the king’s bedchamber
Bedabbed in gore,
Hunched in the dark with not two but three henchmen
In Banquo’s path,
And waded so far into Fife’s red pool
It was easier to go o’er than turn back.
We two, famous murderers,
Have had our fill.
November 1991
Salmon River
I'm going to sit
With my love
On the grassy bank
Beside the soft sparkle flow of the Salmon River
Near Challis.
We will dangle our feet above the small smooth rocks
That have dried themselves in the hot August sun.
A hundred year old willow's meager shade will
overhang us
As we munch crackers and cheese
And swill bottled water,
Kiss,
Think about the past,
The future,
The now.
Two dragonflies, a large one and a smaller will twist, coupled,
Up across the water,
Land on a small green leaf of a branch above,
Remain oblivious to everything for many long minutes,
Motionless.
A small trout will leap out of the current, "smack."
A magpie will flutter across the river far below and land in a large cottonwood.
We will sit some more.
You come sit here too.
August 1994
Hope
The hope of America
Strides across the morning Safeway parking lot
Heads toward Raphael Weill School
And the downtown 38 Geary stop at Webster.
One an apple for her class,
Dressed smartly in a short frock
With knee-high white stockings,
A red sweater with a matching bow,
Her Cookie Monster lunch box clutched securely,
Bulging blue jean backpack snug.
The other a plum for her commerce or high finance,
Wearing a business suit, nylons, and walking shoes,
Her brown briefcase gripped.
They stride toward Albert and me.
“Can I pet your dog?” the little girl asks.
I stop. Albert stands calm, appreciative of the small hand stroking his head.
“What kind of dog is he?” the woman asks.
I reply and then say to the girl, “You like dogs.”
The woman explains, “We live in the towers back there.”
“Can’t have a dog?”
“Yes, but they charge you four hundred dollars for deposit.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Yes, but that’s the way it is I guess. Thanks for stopping.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a nice day.” Off they go chattering excitedly.
Albert and I watch them.
He, though curious, smells them only as an interesting reassurance.
He doesn’t invent their lives together in the concrete walls of the seventh floor
Nor wonder how they got to here
Nor espy in them a special kind of hope.
April 1992
Ontario Morning
If you have a dog with you,
Or you’re power-walking with your wife,
Each in a handsome, bright sweat suit,
Or if you’re just alone in powder blue
But have a color-matched Walkman on your head,
It’s okay,
The neighbors newly-waked
Or the breakfasting family down the road
Won’t mark you for lurking and call the Sarnia police.
You can saunter on,
Tobi straining for those odors in the tall grass at the gravel’s edge.
To the east, immense gray clouds pile up, pile up against the horizon,
Rising higher and higher in a race against the sun to block its way.
Their magnificent tops turn soft now—lighter—white.
Out of the west and now quite overhead, silhouetted against the light blue of this side’s
morning sky,
A V of geese wheels.
By the time Tobi and I reach Blackwell Road,
The geese, this time incessantly calling each to each wheel back west across our path once more.
They’ve doubled their strength now,
Stretched out at least a mile in two long lines,
Practicing in earnest for the annual north-south, south-north ritual.
Ontario has been good this year,
Especially this morning.
Late August 1994
Polaris
A homeless guy
Probably under thirty
Has moved onto the concrete space beneath our bridge,
His dark back showing below the soiled sweatshirt
That rides up as he tosses in his sleep.
There he stays
Day after day
Where the bridge takes a sharp right up
Not thinking, he litters the sidewalk below
With fast food cartons, wrappers, top ramen cups,Even a sockOne time a single battered Nike.
He never asks for money.
Usually he sleeps
Occasionally he’ll glance at me when I go by
His odor penetrates five or six yards outwards
So there is no escaping him
By looking the other way
Or shaking my head “no”
Because as I said before,
He never asks for money.
A mother’s son, he,
Perhaps even a father himself,
And most certainly a brother.
Flotsam of our time
The simple economic product
That builds Polaris submarines,
Arms them with nuclear warheads,
And flaunts them
In the nightmarish hell
That’s called anti-communism
And drives us to desperation
And restless afternoon sleeps
That make our soiled sweatshirt ride
Up our dark backs
As we scrunch up against the metal and concrete bridge
That connects this side of Geary to Japantown.
June 5, 1993
Wedding Photograph
Dear Rachel,
Though I know why all too well
And have struggled through some of your tough details with you
And have learned to expect the worst,
It still hurts
That you took you and Bill
Off my shelf
To replace yourselves with Baby Nolan,
The one I picked,
The one with just a trace of tear.
Frozen in time
Your wedding smiles were still
So sweet and shy and innocent
They re-evoked
An overflow of gratitude
That floods the chambers of my heart.
I dance again with the women of your wedding:
Princesses called Jean
Bill’s boss,
Sister Beulah
Bridesmaid Diane
Tracy
Mrs. Duffy’s young cousin
Lisa
Sarah
And the others I remember less
But who may have been,
Well,
In an old man’s recollection,
Astonishing,
Our faces splashed in champagne smiles,
Legs and arms and torsos
Abandoned to the beat
A wild, rock, Chico kind of dancing
That went on beyond the contract with the band.
You wore sunglasses.
This morning I looked up there to see my children
And you had fled.
You had to take you both,
For that is the photographic way
The camera frames life the way it is,
Stark white
Absolute black
Unforgiving
Capra’s Republican shot, falls
Eleanor talks with black-faced, white-eyed miners
Ghandi spins still his daily cotton cloth
Edward basks at Mrs. Simpson’s feet
Walker’s gaunt mother and children stare from Oklahoma porches
And there’s the pity—
Wanting you to stay the way you were
Joyful
Loving
Hovering there just on the edge of greatness.
I remain,
Lovingly yours,
Quentin
p.s. It hurts. Or did I say that once before?
April 1991