98.6

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Hello everyone. As promised, I am bringing you some selections from 98.6. The song that you just heard, I just wrote, um, it's probably not complete, but it it it's a phraseology of um a feeling and an emotion, and that to me is a song. So it it elicits something that I feel that I hope you will feel as you listen to it. That's the idea. And I've entitled it Swan Song, which, as all of you I'm sure, know, Swan Song is an ending. And really, this 98.6 book is kind of an ending for all of the books that I finally have up on Amazon. So I feel pretty good about that. And I want to share some of these selections. I think they're about 11. I want to share sort of my favorites, but things that I think will matter to you, and uh that matter to me anyway. So I'm going to begin um in a moment with those, but I did want to follow up on what I um opened with, which is the swan song. I really think that after I record these 11 from 98.6, um probably it will be my swan song. It probably will be. Um there used to be a phrase a long time ago uh when my kids were in their teens and they'd say, That's all she wrote, baby. And I think really this is all she wrote, baby. So now that I have the back 40 up on Amazon and 98.6, I'll probably end uh short and sweet, which has become long and sweet, but I will probably end it after this recording. And I've had a wonderful time. I love you all. I hope you enjoy my writing because I certainly have enjoyed sharing them with you. And now to go into 98.6 and the way that this book opens. Um, of course, it's a long time ago that I wrote this, but bear with me. It begins this way. This is not a poem. You probably would know that. Um, when I finally sorted through 32 years of poems, some written on the back of kindergarten announcements, some on paper plates, I discovered that I had 98.6 poems. The 99th poem was only a little over halfway written. I felt it appropriate to therefore let 98.6, my quotes, normal body temperature, be the title for the average range of emotions contained herein. I invite you to complete the 99th poem, which will put us a little above normal, and that's okay with me. And now to begin with the poems themselves. I begin with If Dead Leaves Could Sing. Etched against white winter's sky, a frozen tree caught my eye. Its last year's leaves were clutching tight, battling both wind and snow, and somehow managing to survive. For a brief moment they looked like birds that come on a summer day and flood the trees with the songs of May. Perhaps this tree was lonely and begged that they would stay. A lot of my poems, I'm digressing from the book for a moment, have to do with winter or the seasons. Um living in Connecticut has been a true blessing. And many of the winters that we've endured and will endure, they they touch your emotions, they touch your heart, and that's what a lot of these are about. So I now go to let's see what we have here um to die to change. I'm content to let the wildflowers die. What's so vivid and so gay, but strangely now, their hue does cry of a new and ever powerful ray. The red and white berries picked are now a brighter red, and whatever they were are now a fluff, but soft and still a part of beauty in their vase. The golden rod leans limply out, but gold it still remains. The centerpiece I thought had died, had really changed before my eyes. And this one is entitled The Gift of Sight. If we all could see the things around us as though we'd never seen them again, the brilliance and importance of our lives we'd see as wiser men. The beauty of a flower would make us stop to cry. We'd stare in disbelief as sunlight shatters bright the morning sky. A cardinal sweeps his flaming wings against the setting sun. A golden headed child rolls through greenish grass for summer fun. A lover's hand reaches out to help the other cross a stream. Sugar frosted berries bob around in china bowls of cream. Raindrops shine on yellow roses, glazing warm in wake of summer showers. My God, the world would suffer were it without your gift of flowers. The world will always be here. We'll stop to see it later. Why must it take a loss to gain something that's greater? We take for granted what is ours, our loves, our lakes, the passing of the hours, and then the slap of fate, an accident, a death, and a reversal if it's not too late. Why must it take a mortal fright to enhance appreciation of our sight? Drink in the world with newly opened eyes, enjoy it now before it dies. And this one is entitled To the Pond and Back. Shining silver sharpened blades slicing through the silver days, the long white whipping winter tail lashes back at those who fail. The cold and hard and wet it is to fall, so balance trims a must for all. A child's red nose and snowspraak cheeks are adults' bright spots in the barren weeks, crystal mitten hands to hold as newfound friends embrace the cold. Human friendships always warm when there's common fear from harm. In the bitter teeth of storms, interdependence usually forms. By four the sun has worked too long, and just can't sing its warming song. Time for only one more glide from over here to the other side, then hurry quick to unlace the skates, all thoughts now on the meal that waits. The feet rebel when shoes and clothes as one runs on home with bricks for toes. How warm and soft in the sharp blue night looks the little square yellow kitchen light, and the welcome words we all recite. Hi Mom, I'm back. I had fun tonight. And this one is entitled, Oh God Larry. And this was a commemorative poem, I guess you might say, to Blizzard Larry in 1978. We are living in a blizzard, Blizzard Calvin, I think it's called, um this this date in 2026. But I think it's appropriate to share this with you. Oh God Larry is the name of it. Heavy hung, the boughs laid low, the ground is higher, the birds are slow, and all around this wall of snow, the people are dressed, and there's nowhere to go. Long ago when the blizzards came, life was simpler. The birds were game. The people feared the storm back then. There was no name, it was no friend. Larry now became a man. We weren't afraid, we plotted his plan. But Larry was no man, you see, an ancient exumed god 'twas he. The storm came back to warn mankind to make us see where we'd been blind. Not a Larry, mortal name, no kinship here, we're not the same. At least a Jupiter or Thor, or better yet Mars, the god of war. Not a mic or Tom or Larry, but a respectful title and a humble Larry. And this is entitled Little Shabig I wandered to the furthest shore, one beyond the point. The warning sign had run aground and seemed innocuous enough, its message riptides, quicksand, seemed the title of a song. For surely as the sea spray shines, it in gentle fragrant sweeps, this ordered bar of sand with rows of gull robbed shells need not endanger any man. Yet swelling deep within the belly of the sea, an ever lustful riptide sings, Abide with me. And the magic and the drama have spun me in its web, and I must run away or lie drifting in its ebb. And this one is entitled Rain Sheets. We've seen the rain come across in sheets, pouring slick on city streets, difficult to see unless there is a span wide enough to show more than a city square. It takes mountains and valleys to watch the spectacle from there. And what a sight it is at as it steadily progresses from beyond the foothill trees. The Slaton wall of wetness interrupts all normal thought processes. You just can't help but realize the uselessness of flight that's coming on relentlessly. Is an awesome, humbling sight. And this one is entitled Closeline Shadows. Shadows of a Clothesline bounce across the wooden screen. A bird has landed and it's playing circus with no net underneath. I will always love a clothesline. It reminds me of my mother every time. Only she could boil socks and star water while lime a beans cooked on the stove. Then the already clean garments were washed again and squeezed through that ringer that always jammed on Mom. And finally she would stand on a wooden box and still have to jump to put the clothes out on the line. I just like the fragrance of the air blown through the clothes I wear. I do have a dryer which Mom never had until she didn't need one. Just shadows on the old screen door brought me a long way back. I wonder if someday my kids will associate me with a microwave oven. What a way to be remembered. And this one is entitled Ode to the Groundhog. Perhaps because you live beside the swelling roots and hear the rush of thawing earth waters, you became our harbinger with all that that entails. An awesome job for such a furry face without an inkling or a trace of interest in what day it is. Perhaps you just tolerate us with all our cameras, reporters and the like, and do your thing regardless of their being just as you would on any day. I just wonder if you would be doing this if your name was dirt pig instead of groundhog. I'm sure you would lose your following, or some at least, who care what's in a name. Don't forget, though, we aren't as close to the fragrant roots and softening sands, and we merely need a scrap of truth from one of nature's own that our winter will truly end. Remember that, sweet groundhog, and try to hasten spring. I know you can't, but it's really fun to think and believe me, you could never be named Dirt Pig. And this one is entitled The Middle. Lighter, silver radiance almost like the moon, above the mountain in Japan, the day is born in light. Deepened California crimsons fold the sun into its blanket and wrap the light beneath the sea. Between the east and west, the daylight hours are shared as the earth spins one more time, and in the middle we move about. And this one is entitled Winter Blues, and I end with this one as from the selections from 98.6. Um again in tribute to winter, and I look out the window here, and we are in a blizzard and it's blowing, and I I still have power, so I'm therefore still podcasting. So I end this episode, this podcast really, with winter blues. Light years away and fathoms deep beneath the sea, two points form a color line from aqua to navy, bending slowly in eternity to form a light blue cradle for spring. Every year I worry that they will never meet, and the cold that runs along that line will stay poker straight and unforgiving, and winter will continue as that line stirs round the globe like a swizzle stick in ice. The bending of that line, the melting of the blues, and the singing of the birds are precisely synchronized to appear without intervention and are not subject to prevention, but still I worry when the winter's hard and pray for softer blues. I pray for that for all of you. And I'm going to um that's the last poem I'm going to include. But the last page in 98.6 says this. It is that um half a point, a little over half a poem that I referenced at the very beginning and where the book got its title of 98.6. So this is the conclusion of that book. This poem's for you. Watching weddings in the fall, and wondering if they've heard the call to unison and friendship and things that matter that don't cost a lot, and wondering too if the years will ride easy on them as they walk away. A clean slate, a kind fate. Who knows how this story ends? As I said in the beginning, take a moment to finish this, and the number of poems will then be 99, just a little above normal. And what's wrong with that? And that's the way the book concludes. I love you all dearly, and this is my swan song to you, and I hope you enjoy everything, and they are available on Amazon. My final plug on that, too. So God bless, and perhaps I'll be back again, I'm not sure, but um I'll I'll be thinking and maybe writing some more.