One last poem for National Poetry Month.....one from a few years ago

Autumn Viewing

The loud tone over the PA beckoned our attention –
punctuating the air, signaling an announcement:
A drill? A test? A reminder of a thing forgotten?
Must we go outside and pretend the school’s on fire?
The voice from above announced your passing,
and my heart groaned while the words
echoed through the silent, empty hallways.
The students shifted nervously in their seats –
and refrained from chewing their gum.

Later, I sat in the cafeteria
as a class filed outside to sketch an autumn day.
It was nice to see the woods ablaze –
crimsons and umbers and deep rusts
sprinkled together in a symphony of crayola chaos.
What a model to sit for these students,
who know nothing of a proper canvas –
only their iPod screens and Gameboys.
Even through the mess hall aroma of meatloaf and green beans
I could smell those leaves – the musty scent of dried apricot
with plum and a hint of overripe persimmon,
like those I used to throw as a boy
at my friends who lived across the street.

At the funeral home with the widow
a crystal chandelier hangs oblivious from its ornamental medallion
like my hands at my sides, not knowing where to go.
The adults shift nervously on their feet
and refrain to look but straight ahead.
In the corner under a crucifix
they have placed you, Bob Murphy.
You rest amid the flowers –
giant masses of asters, chrysanthemums, gerberas –
and there is a red velvet kneeler for the prayerful.

The box where you lie is simple –
solid, rich brown oak with a tight grain,
straight lines and no adornments.
Off to the side they’ve placed the pictures of you:
as a little boy grinning shyly,
in a football uniform, ruddy-faced at summer camp,
with your brothers, smiling on vacation, holding a new baby,
balancing two red-headed children on your knees,
and then in artful black and white
you stare into the eyes of your beloved the day you wed.

This parlor is so pretty,
with its gilded mirrors and brass sconces;
the shining highboy once held table linens, perhaps,
and an immaculate sideboard stands
with no food upon it.
All I can smell are the lilies,
the damask upholstered couches,
a wisp of lemon oil,
and the woman in blue with too much perfume.

Your widow leaves the room to take some air,
and the room sighs, relieved at her exit.
Your brothers, with their freckles
and sharp Irish chins, work the room
shaking hands and saying hello and thank you
to people they do not know.
The eldest is rumpled—
the first shirt he found and threw in a duffel
as he raced to catch a red-eye.
Kind, polite, and nodding,
they look and sound too much like you
and it hurts to speak with them.

In a well-lit curio cabinet rests a collection of bells –
little dainty brass tinklers,
a miniature china bell with a winter scene,
some crystal fluted bells with etched lines,
one blue jasperware with a cameo,
a dented copper cow bell,
small brass school bells with wooden handles,
a porcelain tea bell,
and a reproduction Liberty Bell.
To call from a sickbed? To meditate? To warn? To alert?

I pause behind a winged-back chair
as your students huddle around you,
looking and wondering and whispering.
I watch them watching you, inspecting you.
And they just stare:
a sad curiosity, a curious sadness.
The slight girl sobs, and a boy snickers witlessly.

And me, I slide out the side door
under cover of their confusion.
The night air is chilly and dry;
a quick breeze clips my cheeks as I turn the corner
and head for my car in the parking lot.
The whirr of a streetlamp illuminates a swirl of leaves
trapped between a pickup and a minivan.

-- Dacula, 2006

A poem because it's National Poetry Month...

This poem I wrote a few years ago, but I still like it.............

The Man Who Had a Thing for Neko Case

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Neko Case,
all because I walked past a half shuttered farmhouse
with its scraggly forsythia and bottle-thrown windows.
I heard your seraphic high notes in the distance,
stuck in a canyon at dusk with nothing but sagebrush and tears
to scare away the coyotes.
I saw you shirtless and brazen at the microphone,
smoldering looks to the ushers and the college boy in row 12,
asking about their nightmares and if they love their mothers.
Your hair lights up the darkness –
a pile of glowing embers from some burned down cottage.

In the concert hall, Garth meditates on his Lowrey,
channeling Bessie Griffin like a teleprompter.
And you, Richard Manuel, what brings you here
to the sound stage? Was it you who passed along your muse
to her fifteen-year-old runaway soul?
Where will you take me, Neko, after the show?
Will we walk to the airport and watch the planes take off?
Will we touch each telephone pole, one after the other?
Or, will we run all the way back to Tacoma,
looking for battered front porches and empty swing sets
with rusted chains?

--Michael McIntyre
Dacula, 2008

On March...

The month of March a sorrow brings. Yes, around this time every year, the daffodils have outstretched their lanky green stalks, some adorned already with the bright yellow claxons of spring soon upon us. Gangly forsythia – yellow bells, your grandmother might say – shower front yards and roadsides with their tiny golden trumpets of the new season. Even so, as the middle of this month approaches every year, it is always with a tinge of melancholy or even downright sadness. St. Patrick’s Day, you see, was my mother’s favorite holiday.

Growing up in my house there were 4 holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day. Oh, Halloween was tolerated – but really only as a marker for All Soul’s Day, and that meant an extra mass that we had to go to. St. Patrick’s Day, though, was eagerly anticipated every year—a major event: Boston Butt on the stove, potatoes, party at the Knights of Columbus, the whole shebang. By the 5th of the month, the shamrock-laden decorations would be out (some never went away, really, like the shillelagh that hung by the hallway door), and by the 10th of the month we children would begin to hear our mother addressing the books on the shelves in our family den – Keep away now, you! I’m not going to put up with any of your mischief this year! She was not going insane, though. She was merely anticipating Timothy.

Timothy, as you’ve likely guessed, is a leprechaun. Not just any leprechaun, mind you – but our leprechaun. He never visited anyone else. But, oh the mess he made of our house for most of that week. Books to the floor. Chairs tipped over. Toilet paper unrolled. Light bulbs unscrewed. All manner of tomfoolery we came to expect from him. And my mother took glee in every minute of it, screaming up into the kitchen cupboards as she prepared supper, with me on the stool by the counter eagerly anticipating whatever madness might ensue. Naturally, I would always just miss being able to see him, despite my mother pointing wildly to where she could clearly see him – but not quite quickly enough, for by then he had dashed off as I glanced his way. Oooooooo, Timothy!! You’ve ruined my soup!!!! And then she would look at me, mischief in her own eyes. It’s ok. I can fix it. I’ve got a few tricks that even a leprechaun doesn’t know.

And thus it would go, year after madcap year – a grown woman in a light blue housecoat chasing a leprechaun with a wooden spoon – all to the sheer delight of her children, and then to the delight of her children’s children. All until the chase eventually ended and we lay her to rest, a rest with no mischief but a blessing upon her casket, and in with the lilies some Bells of Ireland next to the freshly turned earth.

So with March every year, for me there comes a sadness. The gloom does not, however, persist. It never fails that come the 14th or the 15th or so, I begin to hear the scampering of little feet amidst the cupboards and bookshelves of my own house. And with the giggling of a little man – a giggling, yes, that I alone can here – comes the one true balm for that sad memory. Ah, yes – it is March. It is March, and there is still some mischief to be wary of, there are chairs to be righted, and books to be reshelved. Ol’ Timothy knows no rest, you see. And where there are children on St. Patrick’s Day, there are shenanigans to be had!

Work In Progress.....I think

The following is a poem that began when I was a junior in college taking creative writing with Tom O'Grady at Hampden-Sydney. From time to time I have taken it out an tinkered with it. I think it's getting there....but really not sure. Such is poetry, I guess. Let me know what you think.

Sprouse's Farm, After the Rain

Rusty tendrils of honeysuckle
weave their way up the pickets
of the front yard fence fashioned last May.
Sparkling refugees from a late summer shower
hang patiently off of bedraggled yellow petals
as if anticipating their release when I shut
the gate behind me to take my nightly stroll.

Thunder smudges pass on in the distance,
and a calm blue sky intercedes overhead
soft and agreeable in the twilight.
A solitary robin and a few vesper sparrows
stroll the wet firm grass, intently
searching out their evening meal.
Frantic squirrel dashes from tree to tree, and
an orange-tinted cloud ambles distractedly
overhead, as if tethered to the chimney
of the tidy brick bungalow next door.

A gaggle of children go back to their swing sets
for one last game of hide-and-seek,
as I whistle my way down Lucerne Drive --
Tripped over a dog in a choke-chain collar
People were shouting and pushing and saying...
Steam lifts lazily from half-cooled streets,
disrobing that familiar workaday exhaustion.
I wave hello to the old couple on the porch swing
and they nod in return--
lift up their countenance to me.

At the end of the subdivision,
where the permits and concrete curb ran out,
Sprouse’s farm --
the man who wouldn’t sell --
stretches back to the pine forest
beyond the praying mantis limbs
of the high voltage towers
that curve away in the distance.

Windows smashed out and paint peeling,
the old house sits there, remembering --
the wild eyes that turned a shotgun
on the upturned hands, the gingham apron,
then tossed a lantern into the hayloft
before one last trigger pull to the head.

Barbed wire on a half-rotted fence post
and a string of Confederate Jasmine
breaking free-- rambunctious,
tangled messily, but perfect
for the empty pebbled milk glass vase
on the kitchen window sill.

About face -- cracked black asphalt stretches on
as the sun begins its disappearance.
Vagabond children run for home
at their parents’ call;
crickets chirp in response
as the first evening stars begin their watch.

I walk on, no longer whistling,
attempting to outpace
nighttime's descending drop cloth.

small victory......I'll take it

"Oh, yay.....this is fun! It's like solving a riddle!!"

-- seventh-grade student, surprised, upon uncovering a metaphor in Frost's The Pasture

The Father / Daughter Dance

Tonight I had the pleasure of that singular event which all men who have little girls look forward to: the elementary school father / daughter dance -- an indescribable delight which I shall, nonetheless, attempt to describe.

It is an almost surreal sight: a crowded cafeteria, pink streamers and crimson balloons lashed to the stainless steel serving lines; garlands of red paper hearts dangle from the plexiglas sneeze guards, and dimply pink cupids festoon the shiny refrigerated milk carts. The tables are sprinkled with glossy little die-cut hearts and topped with tissue paper centerpieces.

A cadre of grown men wearing ill-fitting suits amble about looking supremely unconfident. With each of them is a princess bedecked in red velvet or pink chiffon, sparkly sequined ballet flats, and a beatific smile that says aren’t I fancy? -- a princess whose hand they gingerly clutch as they search about the room for clues of what to do. Each man and his princess wait in line for chocolate dipped strawberries, for red velvet cake, and they sit at long tables with giddy friends and clink their plastic cups of pink frothy punch.

In the middle of the room, by the DJ with his soundboard and the razzle dazzle disco lights, each of the fathers attempts hesitantly to dance with his little princess. I can throw a ball....I can yell from the sidelines...I can change the oil in my car....but how do I dance with this small vision of perfection and not let her know how terrified I am. He shuffles about uneasily, holding her hands and swinging her arms akimbo in some sort of delirious but indistinct jitterbug to the rhythm of a Katie Perry candyfloss.

And all is fine and awkwardly good until a slow country song with a heartfelt voice comes on. Stop. Pause. Then each commences a clumsy two step with his princess, swaying back and forth, smiling. On goes the song, the heartfelt singer...

“She would always be

playing Cinderella, riding her first bike--
bouncing on the bed, and looking for a pillow fight--
running through the sprinkler with a big Popsicle grin--
dancing with her dad, looking up at him...”

And slowly you see the jaws of grown men clench tight as the words sink in -- as they swing hesitantly to and fro, trying not to cry.

The Truest Truth I Know

(I wrote this poem last year for Valentine's Day, and surely it bears repeating)

From across a smoke-filled bar
I saw you,
index finger summoning,
so I approached
and fell in love
with the girl next
to me.

At an intersection,
two roads converging,
I sat the next day
hands at 10 and 2
and did not know 
the light had changed.

With each thought of you, 
time still stops—
rocking a baby so she would not cry,
searching for shells on a white sand beach,
stringing beads with a silly six-year-old,
knitting a scarf to give to a friend,
sending a 12-year-old off to camp--
Time stops, 
but my heart goes on in certainty.

In the future all I want is you.
If I beckon now,
will you sit with me
and hold my hand when I am old,
a greybeard upon some park bench
mumbling nonsense that only you
are meant to understand.

To Beth, with love

Michael

2010