A Dating Tale

I took a girl home for Christmas one year. I was lonely and she was lonely too. I picked her up after work one night at a college campus; she lived in a wood there along with many others, related and unrelated to her. This was supposed to be temporary, just for the holidays. I promised her, and myself, that I would return her to her wood in January, but I did not live up to that promise. We have been together ever since that December 23rd day when I borrowed her to allay my loneliness. Maybe I saved her life, maybe she saved mine. Or, maybe both. I know I never regretted taking her, or keeping her. The wood I took her out of that night was Avery Wood, so that became her name, Avery. Since that solstice, she has been my best friend. I have never regretted that date. I don't know how she feels about being with me, I am sure she has had her doubts, but she never lets on. She did run away at one point not long after she came to live with me, and when she returned there was something different about Avery. Two months later, there was three of her. We kept one for our very own and that's how Alexander Supertramp came to be here with us. Alex is five now and I still never regret bringing his mama cat home to keep me company.

The Life

The Life                                                                                                March, 2013

“She’s divorcing me.” He said, referring to a wife who is now a stranger. Someone he still loves who no longer loved him.

That was all he had to say. His eyes were welling up with tears, for me, a stranger having to hear such a thing; and for the fact that I was there and he was there and him unable to pay for a room for the night. He was contrite and so was I; we were both hoping something could be worked out by the desk clerk, but no, it was not going to be.

I could see the story unfold. He showed me the email from a friend in Baltimore who said, “…see you have been floundering in jail in New Orleans.” And, “I’m praying for you!” So far his friend’s prayers have only gotten him as far as Mobile.

A group of his friends had come to New Orleans and gotten him out of jail, he told us. And what happened after that? I remember thinking.

Baltimore’s Ravens had won the Super Bowl. The party after that at the Super Dome was only the beginning. He never said it, but what I saw before me was a Super Bowl remnant caught up in the revelry of victory and Mardi gras. And that was it; he was lost in New Orleans and locked up for having too much fun. It did not matter, at that point, how many Ph.Ds. or how heads he had shrunk at Johns Hopkins. To NOPD you are just a case file, paper work, a part of the demographic.

“Maybe I’ll walk back to the bus station.” I remember he said as he walked away, out the front door, across the courtyard, on to Royal Street and into the only open bar in town. Not the place I was hoping he would go.

It was the only place that was not going to remind him of her. Not like the loneliness of the bus station inhabited by lost, transient souls trying to forget someone. He had to seek solace in the spirits he trusted. They, he believes, have become his only friend.

She had divorced me too; way back in 1989, and afterward, I was on the same road. A road I struggled along for a long while. A many years struggle that I survived when I decided I had had enough of the wallowing and self pity.

An Irish Twin Am I

I am an Irish twin.
I was born in January
my brother born in November
of the same year.
We grew up in bunk beds
fighting over top or bottom
and I can't remember who won.
We fought when we were board
with nothing better to do,
there was never any real violence
or hate, we were just boys being boys
and that's what boys do.

Now, Joe lives in Virginia
I live in the town where we were boys
and I miss him all the time
the years apart have made us closer,
but our bunk beds further apart.

WPCannon

January 20, 2012 at 1:24am

Mama

Betty Ann gave me books. She was my mother who loved to read. She had expressions about her that were literary, insightful & uncompromising. She stayed at home, took care of the house, raised her babies- her husband knew where to find her & and in between the cleaning and the preparation of meals, she read trashy romance novels that some how got her out of the house, away for the day and into the arms of erotic, romantic liaisons destined to become my mother's legacy to me- her love of books and the reading of their stories.

I used to write her letters from the navy days when I was away. I didn't know, until after she had died, I was told that she loved reading those letters so much that she would show them off all around town. She would send them to her sisters, brothers & read them to her friends and neighbors. She liked my writing and the story I'd tell about Tunis, Alexandria, Barcelona & Greece.

If she was still here, if the cigarettes had not killed her, she'd be my first reader. My mother, my muse, my legacy waits.

Muse on Sunday Morning

The problem

with silence

in doughnut shops

on Sunday

mornings

is that it never

lasts.

Too many arrive

for coffee

and sugar

to interrupt

my muse.

There is no poetry

in doughnuts

but just outside

live oaks draped

with Spanish moss

gray-green wisps

on a breeze

in my view

wave away

blue days

like sunshine

coffee

and doughnuts.

WPCannon

July 7, 2013

Havana, FL

Public Library

"There is no library here."
She said."Maybe you can start one."

"That is what I would have to do. I can't
imagine living in a town without a library."
I said.

But, the second day I was here
there she was, "Public Library"
a beacon waving me home.
Right next to the war memorial
that was now know as Veteran's
Memorial. A bronze soldier
guarding the library
against all enemies,
foreign and domestic,
surrounded by roses
placed there to let
the bronze image
of courage know
that it was alright to go
and never return
and that thanks
to their courage
and sacrifice
we have this library
and these roses
a place to memorialize their
actions; not to glorify war,
 but to honor the cost
of freedom.
And for public library
patrons to checkout
the heirloom roses.

WPCannon
04 June 2013
Havana Public Library

The Waiting Room

In places
like these
waiting is
expected.
There is a
t.v. on
every wall,
and
very few
clocks
except for
the one
paid
to be there
that
we watch
to
remind us
all
how long
this has been
our waiting
room.
So, pull up
a chair
the wait
is nearly
over.

WPCannon
04 June 2013
Tallahassee, Florida

Saturdays In April

Indian, spectacular wedding,
has been going on for days
and days, a party like I have
never seen, elephant dancing
without a care, a smell, curry
in the air.

Punjabi rites in Sanskrit
Hindu dance, all together
uniting a pair in togetherness
and forever.

Another large table,
one hundred pounds, curried rice
cooked to perfection,
no end in sight...

The same day, 1957
Mother and Father wed
in the Chapel of Saint Cecilia
the party not nearly as
elaborate, bright or pungent,
but together they stayed,
forever until the darkness
settled over her and ended
their dance.

WPCannon
Mobile, AL
27 April 2013

Al-T's

   After driving all day and all night, what is the first thing a trucker does when they stop and get out of their truck? They start looking for another place to sit down. That’s an old trucking joke, very old, but not far from the truth.  And the best place for a trucker to sit down after battling traffic, bad weather and distracted drivers is at a table or counter where good food is being served.

   It’s been said that truck stops serve the best food and that may have been true at one time, but these days the good old fashioned truck stop diners have been replaced by fast food— only good for filling up an empty belly. Lost is that Mom & Pop feel and that once was an important part of the American trucking landscape. I should know, I was on the road for twelve years. 

 

   The hardest part of the job was being out there; away from home and family. This isolation gave rise to the need to be connected. C.B. radios gave truck drivers a way to communicate and commiserate with one another without having to stop the truck and sit down across from one another to do it. Misery loves company; or so they say. 

 

   It was too many years, and too many miles ago to know exactly where I was headed but I do remember I was driving northbound on Interstate 65 in Kentucky when I heard a truck driver on the C.B. start talking about the best food he’d ever had. The driver’s name, or handle, I never got, or can’t remember, is more like it— but he was from south Louisiana (that I could tell from his dialect and his passion for food in general). But he carried on and on for miles about some place called AL-T’s Seafood & Steakhouse in Winnie Texas. He carried everyone else on channel 19 right along with him that night.  I have to admit, I got caught up in his enthusiasm too and so, eventually, I started making mental notes. He talked about the freshness of the food at Al-T’s, the seafood at Al-T’s, especially about how folks cooked it like “they was cookin at home”.  The roux was of a particular fascination to the driver, and oh how he carried on about the roux, how perfect it was, how this roux made the best gumbo he had ever had.  He went on about roux and gumbo for at least another hundred fifty miles.

 

   Now I know a thing or two about gumbo. I know that the mere mention of the word evokes in me memories of my mother and Christmas Eve. Mama made gumbo every year at Christmas, which we feasted on after mass on Christmas Eve. Mama’s gumbo was what I was craving when I parked at the truck stop on the Interstate 80 junction near Gary, Indiana. I knew I would not find any gumbo there, I also knew that my mama was gone and whether I was home on Christmas Eve or not, she was not going to be there making the gumbo. I also knew that as soon as I could, I was going to be hopping off I-10 in Winnie, Texas to find out what all the fuss was about concerning Al-T’s. 

 

   It didn’t take me long to get to Winnie. I was in good with the freight brokers and dispatchers back in those days so they hooked me up with a load back down to Dallas and from there it was a hop, skip, and a jump down to Houston. I left Houston one evening, headed east on the road to nirvana. 

 

   Al-T’s was everything the mystery driver on I-65 said it would be and it’s still like no other place I have been while on the road.  Al-T’s is not a truck stop-- in other words you’re not eating out, you’re eating in.  And it may be the best place to eat along any road in the USA. Since my first time there, I never missed an opportunity to stop and eat at Al-T’s, and if there is one thing in this world, that a truck driver loves to do, its pull up a chair, sit down and eat. 

 

Al-T’s -Winnie, Texas, on Interstate 10 between Beaumont and Houston.

 

Al-T's Seafood & Steakhouse
Just off Interstate 10 • Winnie, Texas, USA
P.O. Box 1458 • Winnie, TX  77665-1458
(409) 296-9818

 

The Poetry of Breakfast

with Anna and Regina
at Webb's Cafe in Calvert;
is the omelet going to fit?

It fits-- mostly, but
in the scheme of things
nothing is small enough
or large enough in the
universe for us to fit
into the nothingness
of our lives only
breakfasts and Angie
and mornings at Webb's

WPCannon
14May2013
Webb's Cafe
Calvert, Alabama