Tony Brown's Last Lines #6 ~ #10

WINTRY WORDS, WINTER HORIZONS,
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Pink skyline / light ~ taken by Missouri photographer Jay Beets
on St. Nicholas' Day 2020 ~ but perfect for St. Valentine's!
Additional thanks to Jay for all photos below.

Poems for the heart on a cold Valentine's Day
by Missouri poet Tony Brown
#6
Valentine's Day
(For Christina)
~ Author's note: . . . this is one of my very favorites. I hope y'all like it. . . .

February's bitter end, a break in the weather,
ice barges flowing crewless down to Cairo.

You had the girls in shorts
and our coats piled in the back seat,
molted skins of a false spring
while the worst of winter waited,
frigid tears and icy affections,
the killing frost of silent, insurmountable promises.

But that day there were long, warm shadows,
and we lounged in sandals beside soft snow,
ate hot dogs and napped above the gleaming river …

Shading our eyes with cardboard hearts.

© Anthony Brown, 2020

#7
Hobby Farm
~ Author's note: I've always liked this one. But, then again, the ones I don't like I throw away.

It's been a good year, according to Uncle Bob
we had rain, I mean, man, we had rain
in his voice you hear the scar tissue of
the dry years in the '30s when his dad

just died, as people did on prairie farms,
coughing topsoil from their lungs and leaving
only dust and love and bitter hope behind
to boys manned at 12, soldiered at 18

they lost the farm, of course, just in time
for Bob and Dad and my uncles Lee and Bill
to rescue Western Civ for corn-fed children
who, when we bothered, noticed only that

fields were green, rain was inconvenient,
and dust was what you ate or mother swept
Bob, meanwhile, ran his schools and had
his dinner, raised my cousins, loved Aunt Shirley,

bought the farm, 300 acres worth
of beans, that with all the rain we've had this year
sob their roots into river bottom dirt,
caress the August wind with tears and kisses

we worry about the palsy in his hand
Shirley, wide awake, cries through all
his dreams, calves that died, corn that burned,
leaving dust and hope and bitter love behind.

© Anthony Brown, 2020

#8
After the Party
(For S.B.N.)
~Author's note: Yeah, it's schmaltzy and romantic. But I'm an old man now, and to quote Robert Browning, "How fair she was."

The party had gotten crazy when you picked
me out of the crowd; I was half drunk and you
said I could sleep on the floor at Florence Street.

Later, after working 'till dawn we'd sit
and count the stars until first light when sunrise
made for a sleepy champagne-and-eggs retreat.

Slinging drinks and music in cowboy bars
dreaming someday that we'd both be stars
we went to bed but not to sleep in the tiny
room at the back of the house on Florence Street.

Just a little green house in a sad little town
just two college kids finding love
we broke our hearts then we cried our tears
we wasted days, and then we wasted years.

What would happen if the boy I was
and the girl you used to be could meet …

Would we arrange for the future to change
In the little green house on Florence Street?

© Anthony Brown, 2020

#9
Preaching the word
~ Author's note: This is a short essay [click to read] and not a poem. There are three or four of these I want to include in the series. I was, after all, a newspaper columnist for a good chunk of my life.
Upon occasion, Tony and I have shared
our opinions about the damaging effects
of fundamentalist religious beliefs, when
imposed upon impressionable, young minds.

#10
Sunset

~ Author's note: I wrote this back in the 1980s when I was setting up an old-fashioned word processor for my father -- about the most non-tech person who ever lived.

The contraption, already long out of date, was essentially an electronic typewriter attached to a small screen and capable of storing text on palm-sized floppy discs.

It strikes me that this poem has a new meaning given my grave medical condition. Basically it describes me -- an old word processor nearing eternal obsolescence.

To edit existing document
Or to erase existing document from memory
That is the question

To continue with the magic floppy
Or break our staff and suffer a sea change

To stick with slings and arrows
Or endure the petty iniquities of pre-cyberspace
In these strange days when electron shadows
Not only walk but dance across the screen

How quaint to spin poor verse to the
Antiquated algorithm of a daisy wheel
Pecking out small syllables on a sunset CPU
So far beyond the realm of tech support
That analogies are still possible.

© Anthony Brown, 2020

[All of the comments following this one are great; please click to read!]

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