Moving On, Not Moving On
I think I knew our new home
was two states west of home.
But what could that have meant
across that patch of Illinois—treeless,
barren, flat under heavy April snow?
When you were six, shoveling raised
icy walls to walk between, high, cold
narrows. Even cliffs. And from this
distance—now like a cruel cliché—
isolation, such disjuncture!
But back then, up close? Remember
oblivion to whatever came next?
I envy my own young way: no
routine I would ever know to say,
no bemoaning what lay back east.
Not even an ambition. I played,
shoveled, and rode the bus, moved
into my huge, upstairs room, and
easily made the new best friends
I would only later learn to miss.
—first published in Lost Enough (Finishing Line Press, 2007)
Just Outside Chicago
—for Richard
You had that same odd-for-our-town
last name as who’s still my hero—
Lincoln—and everyone hated you, too,
except for me. For, once we’d waged
our own playground tussle, goaded by my
circling friends, we lived a calm paradox
that may have been my boyhood koan.
Detached, I could discern the archetypes
that struggled amidst our conflicted selves:
you, the white trash thrashing around
in the ring pre-fabbed for your kind—
the drawl, the hand-me-downs, the shack
on that decrepit block; vs. me,
the Beaver Cleaver goody-goody
in a house with a mom who missed
no chance to hear the teacher’s praise.
I wonder if you know that neither
of us would feel welcome now, not
at that school, where kids climb down
from cars the size of shiny rhinos,
or on your old road, which was dozed
to hold the high-tech city hall, or
along the river banks down your hill,
whose once spongy adventures gave way
to a paved attraction, crowds of strollers,
yogurt-cone eaters, crazed shoppers at their
wits’ end of extensive credit, shunning
their lives in honest Abe’s old Illinois.
—first published in Lost Enough (Finishing Line Press, 2007)
Man to Man with the Folks’ New Condo
I’m glad we have this chance to chat, now,
before my parents move in
for the rest of their lives.
There are things you need to know.
Frankly, they may not be easy
to get along with. Toast, for example,
the making of it, you see, for some reason
very important—how brown, how hot,
just when.
Essential things like that.
Remembering past trips, too,
can be irritating,
the details—which hotel,
in Warsaw, for God’s sake,
where they first heard my sister
would divorce her first husband,
and just where that great Dutch
cheese place was, there,
in the mauve photo album,
a few pages after teen me in a tux,
the first wedding.
They will tell you how they miss
all those rooms
in the house where they lived
for forty years this Wednesday—
coincidentally, my mother’s
eighty-first birthday.
And whenever your ‘foreign’ gardeners
mow and trim the prim edges
of this emerald lawn
my parents will tell you how they dream
about their rural yard—all that grass,
the matured maples, the hedge of lilacs
defining the lot line out back.
You also need to know that you
were not their first choice.
They wanted the model
with the sunroom like their porch, to be
closer to the garden, the workshop.
But they were told that could take
another couple of years,
maybe three or four or more,
and, as Mom puts it,
at this point they can’t gamble,
what with Dad likely going
totally blind at any time,
and her just not able
to be their eyes and legs, both,
here, in an all-new city place.
—first published in Tipton Poetry Journal
*
D. R. James’ latest collection, Flip Requiem, was published by Dos Madres Press and is available here.
Learn more about D. R. James on the Contributors page.
(Photo: Eyesplash/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
The 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest is now underway!
$500 first prize, $200 runner-up. $5 entry fee (with a $10 discount on online writing courses).
Accepting fiction and nonfiction under 6,000 words. To enter, click here.
Deadline: September 30th, 2024
The 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest is sponsored by The Daily Yonder. The Daily Yonder offers news, analysis and stories from Rural America, free for readers to enjoy. Visit dailyyonder.com to get more great rural stories, or sign up to their newsletter to receive rural reporting directly in your inbox. Alternatively, you can listen and subscribe to their podcast, Rural Remix, wherever you get your podcasts.
- Moving On, Not Moving On and Other Poems by D.R. James - June 27, 2024
- Three Poems by D. R. James - August 17, 2023