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Common Things

On our first morning in the house
our new home not yet cold
from its last abandonment
we tiptoed on our thin young legs
down to the cool cellar
heavy with the scent of stone and earth
we found a workbench with a few hand saws
tinged with rust in this electric age
and on the floor a 12 pound sledge
useless      with a splintered handle
that could have easily been replaced
if anyone had cared
half way down the basement was
a heavy timbered room
about ten feet on either side
whose door barely responded
to the pull of a ten
and an eight year old
but when it did and when we groped
to find the switch
a single hanging bulb lit up
to reveal a large square chest
a room within a room
a poultry incubator six feet tall
varnished oak with frame and panel doors
drawer after drawer of wire mesh
brass hinges and latches with long thick handles
handles that pulled easily
handles cast without a care
for a bit of extra metal
handles as long as a young boy’s arm
with graceful curves to welcome the hand
and a thickening at the end
to signify nothing but the maker’s sense
of how such a simple metal piece
should look to the eye and feel to the touch
good for nothing now except
to fasten closed a wooden door
if there was something left to seal inside
good for nothing but to teach
a little boy the feel of common things
and help him understand what beauty is
© 2015 Frank Kearns

Basement Photographs

In the cellar
you      and I your older brother
construct another project
the trains of childhood
replaced with a model race car track
built by us from wood and foil
in the picture you and I
heads bowed in concentration
don’t seem to feel the need to talk
but as we planned
the roadway slope
and the spacing of the track
we must have talked
and though I never was a dreamer
we must have talked of dreams
the photographs
are black and white
like shadows     like my memories
and I have spent a lifetime
searching them
for fragments of your voice

©2015 Frank Kearns

Matilda Jane Dunbar 1845-1934

What’s a mother to do
with a son as precocious as this
what’s a freed slave woman to do
but smile at a son who poured out words
in stories      on paper        in print
what’s a mother to do
but swell with a bit of maternal pride
her son a leader of literary men
what’s a mother to think
her son out traveling the world
introduced to presidents and kings
while Jim Crow churns old hatreds
what’s a mother to do but hope
that after the searing civil war
her country will come to embrace her Paul
and all of his brothers and sisters
what’s an old black woman to do
but wake in the night terrified
as footsteps and fires still hammer and cleave

the fate of his brothers and sisters

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Matilda Jane Dunbar was the mother of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906).

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and schoolmate and friend of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one the first influential black poets in American literature.

—————————————–

© Frank Kearns 2015

Mortality and Canned Peas


Mortality and Canned Peas
It may sound heartless when I say
that my first memory of death
is tied to the taste and texture
of green peas from a can
When I first recalled all this
I was sure that these disparate thoughts
had accidentally bumped together
in pre-dawn mind meander time
so I circled back
around my first remembered home
first memory of mother sitting
on the low back stoop in summertime
then on to Maine and my first schools
box after box of feelings to sort through
or more like stacks of wrinkled paper
to be examined each in turn
and here it was        the classmate
disappeared from school one day
my parents told me
as supper sat untouched on plates
told me heaven makes this all OK
and so began digestion of
life and tuna casserole
and soggy tasting green peas from a can

© Frank Kearns 2015

My Father’s House

My Father’s House
The house of my memory
is a semi-rural farm house
with musty smells of
old wall paper and indoor plants.
You              retired
sitting at the dining room table
in pajamas and bathrobe
cigarettes and coffee
AM talk radio
KFWB Boston
daily pleasure
at the agonies of the traffic report.
The house of my dream
is a different house
on a narrow fishing-town street
before great grandmother’s knick-knacks became
a part of frozen memory.
You are a boy
entering the magic door
winding up the attic staircase
the wood a lighter brown with hints of red
the steps twisting and so narrow.
The photograph is yellowed.
You are so delicate in your uniform
your China Burma India Theater patch
jumping out from small shoulders.
Your eyes are feeling something,
seeing something beyond you and me.
In the attic
rubber band model planes
delicate balsa stringers
with tissue paper skin
light as the still air.
And a homemade short wave radio set.
You hear the news
open that high peak window
lean out
and shout to the neighborhood

Pearl Harbor has been attacked!

Mid-Winter Road Trip

Although the overnight weather report
showed that the coming cold front would stay
up in Colorado for another day
the thin film of snow that drifted
across the streets of Amarillo
told us that Flagstaff was out of the question
So we headed down toward Roswell
hoping for Las Cruces
then onto state route seventy
watching the rain freeze on the road
slowing a little more after every roadside wreck
but still going on
till out on a wide expanse of plain
at a place where a pickup truck was overturned
next to a smashed up Honda
someone else
the highway patrol
had to tell us it was time to stop
had to tell us that some days
there just is no way
to keep on heading west

© 2015 Frank Kearns

Ghost Stories

The close sun of Los Angeles
is hard on ghosts
you won’t find them as you might
lurking deep in redwood forests
or soaring on the wind
in the high sky of Mojave
In the light we tell our stories
cheerfully with bits of lunch
           at noisy restaurant tables
standing in chance market meetings
or bravely in fluorescent
          story-telling classes
The ghosts prefer to hide and wait for dark
to float down moon-lit river channels
tiptoe among the black palm tree silhouettes
echo back the words they hear
          in corners of dim living rooms
collect the things that we have hidden deep
and then explode us from our deepest sleep
© 2015 Frank Kearns

Christmas: Orono Maine 1956

The trains would roll

The streamlined F3 locomotive
would pull the Bangor and Aroostook passenger train
across Pine Street and over the Penobscot River bridge
head out of the small Maine town
and like a magnet pull us along
west across the Mississippi to
New Mexico and California   
But for now
the model train laid out in an oval
of flimsy track on linoleum floor
would have to wait the vagaries
of electric circuits in a little house
taxed to the limit by the chill
of winter air against the cracks
and fuses blowing at the demands
of Christmas lights and electric oven
glowing just above the tracks

© 2014 Frank Kearns

Ready to Go

The weathered barn
dusty bay in the far left corner
the nineteen twenty nine Essex
upright steel box of a body
yellow cracked wood-spoked wheels
the grease caked hard on the spindles
the upright bench seats
dusty seat covers somewhat worn
but still intact
the open glove box door
world war two gas coupons
casually thrown inside

plenty of gas

for next week’s trip to Boston

© 2014 Frank Kearns


Image Attribution


By Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Love and Relativity

In the dark of the planetarium
I think about the rings of Saturn
and realize that when we lay together
I fit against the curve of your back
the way the third and fourth rings fit
close but with a space in which
Einstein might have talked of love
as the transition of flesh into energy
or perhaps he meant the other way
because love for us is the oscillation
the transition from the fire of passion
to the feel of the earth when freshly tilled
between the melting of touch and sound
into a glowing orange heat
and the mundane placing of a picture
just above the living room couch
all of which is much more confusing
than Einstein’s simple formulation

© 2014 Frank Kearns