Thank you, dad.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

–Robert Hayden

The Blue Crabs just finished off a sweep of the Long Island Ducks in a three game home stand. On the spur of the moment, I attended the final two games of the series, which the Blue Crabs won 10-2, and 7-2 respectively. The first game of the series was a bit more dramatic, with the home team squeaking out a 9-7 victory.

The weather for the two games I attended was perfect (and I mean perfect!), the crowd was enthusiastic, and the Guinness was acceptably well poured (Guinness Pour Score: 67). My son got to see his favorite minor league player, Curtis Pride, belt a home run in each of the two games. In fact, Pride , who has only five home runs on the season, has hit one in each of the three games my son has attended. Someone should alert management and give this kid season tickets.

The Blue Crabs are now three games over .500 at 24 and 21, and are on a three game winning streak. They next head to Camden for a three game series with the division leaders. A sweep of that series will vault the Crabbies into first place and set up a fun and exciting return home on Monday the 16th for a seven game home stand.

On a side note, and in case you missed it, Blue Crabs ace pitcher John Halama’s contract was recently purchased by the Cleveland Indians. With a 4-1 record and a miniscule 1.91 ERA, John was certainly a prime candidate for moving on.

OK, I’m starting a new feature called the Frustrated Driver Report. At least once a week–and most likely far more often–I’ll feature one driver who pissed me off particularly well during my commute to or from the office. I’ll try to keep the description of the vehicles sufficiently generic (no tag numbers, for instance), unless they’re driving a commercial vehicle, in which case I’ll mention  the company the idiot works for.

Which brings me to my first driver, who happened to be driving a pick-up truck out of Waldorf, MD belonging to Facchina Construction. My hat’s off to you (and my middle finger is raised) for your attempt to make a left turn from the right-hand lane this morning at the intersection of St. Charles Parkway and Route 5. Granted, you did have your left turn signal on, so I do have to give you that. What was especially impressive was the swerve you made directly at my car in the left lane, forcing me to veer into the oncoming traffic lanes. I’m guessing your move toward me was simply an additional signal to the driver behind me that you intended to turn left no matter what, and the gap he created by slowing down to avoid our collision allowed you to do so. Bravo!

To Paul Facchina: if you happen to be surfing the blogosphere for your company name and stumble across this blog, do us all a favor and find out who was driving one of your trucks at St. Charles Parkway and Route 5 at 5:40 this morning and move him to a desk job. He’s got no business being on the roads.

When I was a kid there was this girl in my class named Lucy. She was a little shy and a lot reserved, but she carried herself with a certain quiet dignity and a confidence that I found appealing. Other girls were pretty. She was lovely. I had a crush on her. Lucy and her family went on vacation one summer and she died on the trip in a car accident. Many years later, I came across this poem by William Wordsworth. I committed it to memory the first day I read it and I’ve carried Lucy, that violet by a mossy stone, with me ever since.

SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
–Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

A brief diversion from my typical poetry and booze ruminations to mention the new Scott McClellan book What Happened. I’m only on page twelve and I’ve already come up with a better question: What’s going to happen next?

Bill Bennett, one of the paragon’s of conservative values and virtue wrote a book a few years back titled The Death of Outrage.  The Bush White House had better hope Bennett was right, because the outrage this book should cause should be overwhelming. But will it be? Will the American public demand in large enough numbers and in a loud enough voice that the truth be discovered? Or will we just cackle about a bit, sputtering our typical clichés about needing “change” and how corrupt politicians are, only to wander off once the buzz has died down? I hope not. I hope outrage isn’t really dead, but maybe just in cardiac arrest, sort of flopping on the floor and waiting for a big enough shock to resuscitate it. Maybe this book can serve as the defibrillator for outrage.

More to come as I read on.

There are certain poets who far too frequently say exactly what I wish I could say. Wendell Berry heads that list. When my father was dying a few years ago, diminished by Alzheimer’s and crippled with age, and family members were praying for him to hold on just that little bit longer, I wanted to tell them to let him let go. I wanted to tell them exactly what Wendell Berry says in the first of the three elegies he wrote for his father. I wanted to tell them this:

I
Let him escape hospital and doctor
the manners and odors of strange places
the dispassionate skill of experts

Let him go free of tubes and needles
public corridors, the surgical white
of life dwindled to poor pain

Foreseeing the possibility of life without
possibility of joy, let him give it up.

Let him die in one of the old rooms
of his living, no stranger near him.

Let him go in peace out of the bodies
of his life –
flesh and marriage and household.

From the wide vision of his own windows
Let him go out of sight; and the final

time and light of his life’s place be
last seen before his eyes’ slow
opening in the earth.

Let him go like one familiar with the way
into the wooded and tracked and
furrowed hill, his body.

I took in the baseball game yesterday on what turned out to be a glorious (yes, glorious!) Memorial Day. The view from my seat was pretty damn good, too:

And what began as a potential disaster, with the starting pitcher yanked after 1/3 of an inning and bases loaded, ended pretty well with an 8-4 victory for the Blue Crabs. The only thing that would have made it better would have been more sunscreen on my kneecaps.

And yes, they serve Guinness there, and yes, I had one. Guinness Pour Score: 70 — The server did not let the cup settle before topping it off, but she did pour so slowly and carefully that the beer had almost completely settled by the time she handed it to me. This resulted in a slightly smaller, less dense head, but that beats the hell out of the glass of foam most people serve me.

I’m starting it right here, right now. I’ve finally gotten completely fed up with ordering a Guinness in a bar only to have the bartender pour the thing in one quick continuous draft and then hand me a glass of cascading foam. The last straw was when it happened in a place in Washington DC that advertises itself as an Irish Pub. Seriously, if you’re going to use words like “craic” on your website, you’d damn well better know how to pour a Guinness. And at Fado’s on 7th Street in the District, they don’t. Nor do they know how at the Greene Turtle in La Plata, MD, nor at Hooters or Red Robin in Waldorf, MD.

So, what do I want from you? I want you to speak up. I want you to send your glass back when some bartender trained on Budweiser hands you your Guinness twelve seconds after you ordered it. I want you to email the bar’s local and corporate offices. And most importantly, I want you to support the Guinness Pour Project on your own blog, encouraging all your readers to do the same thing. Spread the word. Sow the seeds of outrage. We deserve a decent glass of Guinness and it’s about Goddamn time we did something about it!

Emily Dickinson once said “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” I know what she means. Sometimes I’ll read a poem that strikes me on such a fundamental, visceral level that the base of my spine will literally itch. I’ve posted a few of those poems here in the recent past, both in this particular column and as responses to other threads. Robert Frost’s To Earthward, and Bruce Weigl’s Elegy, for instance.

What makes those poems work so well for me is not so much what they say, but how they say it. Former Poet Laureate of the United States Robert Pinsky says in his book The Sounds of Poetry that the medium of the poet is the breath of the reader: “When I say to myself a poem by Emily Dickinson or George Herbert, the artist’s medium is my breath.” What I like about that is that Pinsky doesn’t read a poem, he says a poem, meaning he speaks it out loud. If you’ve been reading these poems each week quietly at your computer screen and not speaking them out loud, you’ve been missing more than half of what makes them work. To Earthward in my head is lovely, but in my ear and in my mouth it is incredible. Poetry is first and foremost an aural art form. This week I’ve chosen a poem that sparks at the base of my spine a perceptible itch every time I say it.

They Feed They Lion

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

– Philip Levine

Today I have to drive to Salisbury and pick up my oldest son. He just completed his freshman year in college. Having driven many times over the years to Providence, RI, where my daughter goes to college, I can say the drive to the Eastern Shore is a breeze . I love that drive. Something wonderful happens after you cross the Bay Bridge and Route 50 splits from 301. The buildings fall away from the side of the road and the world opens up just a bit. People drive in the right lane, except when passing. And even then they return to the right lane afterward (What a concept!). It’s not just an easy drive, it’s a relaxing, enjoyable drive. Even those times I’ve been stuck in beach traffic beat the living hell out of my best trip on the Cross Bronx Expressway. So, today, I’ve chosen a poem by Richard Hugo, a poet who found immense beauty in the open road, and in the small towns he discovered on his journeys.

Driving Montana

The day is a woman who loves you. Open.
Deer drink close to the road and magpies
spray from your car. Miles from any town
your radio comes in strong, unlikely
Mozart from Belgrade rock and roll
from Butte.  Whatever the next number
you want to hear it.  Never has your Buick
found this forward a gear. Even
the tuna salad in Reedpoint is good.

Towns arrive ahead of imagined schedule
Absorakee at one.  Or arrive so late-
Silesia at nine – you recreate the day.
Where did you stop along the road
and have fun? Was there a runaway horse?
Did you park at that house, the one
alone in a void of grain, white with green
trim and red fence, where you know you lived
once? You remembered the ringing creek,
the soft brown forms of far off bison.
You must have stayed hours, then drove on.
In the motel you know you’d never seen it before.

Tomorrow will open again, the sky wide
as the mouth of a wild girl, friable
clouds you lose yourself to. You are lost
in miles of land without people, without
one fear of being found, in the dash
of rabbits, soar of antelope, swirl
merge and clatter of streams.