| streetnotes | Summer 2002 | xcp |
Doug Tanoury
Lost On Sunset & Other Poems
I remember
Being lost on Sunset Boulevard
Gazing down smog shrouded streets
At the homeless pushing shopping carts
Filled with bulging plastic garbage bags
Moving slowly
Haunting and indistinct
Their forms vanish in the haze
Like apparitions
Seen for a moment in sidelong glance
Then disappearI remember
Reading poetry in the evening
Under a tree hung with lanterns
My voice awash with the noise of traffic
Bad mufflers and clunking transmissions
The sounds of surf on the shore
That ebb and flow that makes
Every day of my past
Like so much flotsam and jetsamI remember standing
Haunting and indistinct
Like an apparition
Seen for a moment in sidelong glance
Only to disappear
Lost in the noise
And neon magic
Of Hollywood nights
On Mohawk Avenue oaks and elms grow tall
And shade the street in dim twilight
On the brightest afternoons of August
When sunlight burns white and hot
I stop for long whiles to watch the play
Of light and darkness in the topmost limbs
And on the asphalt of the road
Where the blacktop itself becomes like tree barkThe street is empty of people and cars
And is mostly silent and still except for
The wind rustling leaves high in the canopies
And animating the interplay of sunlight and shade
On the roofs of houses that line the street
And lay quite in the coolness like dogs
Sleeping in the shadows
In the waning days of summerOn Mohawk Avenue the oaks and elms
Grow tall and straight like classical columns
In a colonnade of mixed orders
Holding up the temple pediment of summer sky
And I must decide in each case
By the shape and girth of its trunk
If one tree is more Ionic than Doric
In the architecture of an August afternoon
In Pennsylvania coal country,
Near the Pocono's,
Where far horizons rise to the sky,
I know that today the town of Hazelton
Is oddly still in the sunlight
Like a cat sitting on the window sill,
And Cloud Boulevard stretches greenly lush
With long lawns that lay before tall wood frame homes,
And it seems to me
That time advances with a lazy reluctance
On afternoons such as this in mid-May.I have come to walk on Cloud Boulevard
And to remember my life here as a stranger,
A life lived
At what now seems a great distance away
From this coolness in the air
That I now breathe so deeply, and I stroll
Slowly to the East so that the late afternoon sun
Casts my long shadow on the sidewalk
And I pass down this street like a ghost,
Not so much as darkness, but rather,
More as an absence of light.
Flocks of geese
Gathering
Near the curb
Elegant
And quietly feedingThere are no
Picnickers
Only old men
Loitering
Around wooden tablesA canal runs
Parallel
Its water still
Unmoving
Like the roadNear the curb
Elegant
And quietly feeding
Flocks of geese
Gathering
It is an ordinary street that stretches out
Quite unremarkably like any other
Sunny and open on summer days
It seems to capture light
Fully bright and unobstructed by trees
In the last long afternoons of AugustWhere twilight colors in early evening
Paint the white siding of low frame homes
In sunsets cut by high voltage power lines
That divides the sky and span the horizon
Hanging over large dirt lots
Where construction equipment is parkedIn an age of unheroic verse it seems fitting
Somehow to elevate and lift up this landscape
Of modest homes and weed grown yards
To lofty reaches that celebrate and mark
The golden light that falls so richly
On Bermuda Street in late August
In summer children play in the front yards
With hair disheveled and dirty faces
Amid wooden frame homes
Ill kempt and needing repair
That line the street and sit wedged
Side by side and close to the roadLooking neither right nor left
In silence I pass them
The children continue to play as if I were invisible
Like a visitor from a nether world or some ghost
From the hereafter who has come down their street
Just to say hi how are yaBut my mouth cannot bear the banality
Of such an average greeting to interrupt their play
For they are to me the poorly dressed reminders
Of a past troublesome and grim
Of days when childhood rested on me
Like an affliction both serious and direOn this dark street like a Dickens novel
If I stop to talk to one child
I would be addressing my own pain
On a street crowded with regrets
Where problems pile up on the curb
Like the belongings of evicted tenants
It's Sunday morning,
And I'm walking
Down Main Street
Between East Third
And East Fourth.The sky is clear and
The sun is 30 degrees
On the eastern horizon
Between the two and
Three o'clock positions.The light is bright
With shadows deep and
And streets quiet
And mostly empty
Like a Hooper painting.I walk on the sunny side,
Which is the western,
Washed in light and
Cast a long shadow with
Lanky arms that sway.
Along a stretch of rural highway
The land rises and gently rolls.
Sheep graze on sepia hillsides,
Gathered together in dingy gray herds
Like clouds in overcast skies.My thoughts beat me home, and
I hear wind chimes
Hanging from the front porch awning,
The voices mixed with in laughter
In the kitchen.Corn stalks left standing in December
Spreads across fields like honey,
Where neglected barns lean
Precariously toward sunset, and
Dome-less silos rise into dark skies.I feel the doorknob in my hand,
Where every journey begins and ends,
Far from a sienna and umber landscape,
And desolation of a December afternoon
Along an Indiana highway.
And I wonder if possible
To turn South on Diversey
Or if that street runs
Only east and westAnd now I am confused
About directions and
Cardinal points and am
Lost without a compassAnd I who have always
Known my coordinates and
Have measured my progress
And marked my positionAnd I cannot now discern
Those secret lines of
Longitude and latitude to
Navigate my wayAnd I am off course
Turned round and lost and can't
Get my bearings by sun in day
Or stars at nightAnd I know now it is possible
To turn south on Diversey
A street that runs only in
Directions east and west
The stark brick interior walls
Softened with bright artwork,
City scenes of busy corners,
Yellow theater marquees
And neon signs, the blues
Broadcast from ceiling speakers.
A waiter with three fine gold hoops
In his right ear takes our order.
I have coffee, a side of potatoes
and sour dough rye toast with butter.
She has tea and despite my urging,
Nothing more. I tell her: "This is
The best bohemian breakfast spot."
A waitress, pretty and demure,
Wearing a short but tasteful dress
With black hose,
Her hair tied back in a tail,
Brings my food, and
Asking rather softly,
Delivers a perfectly
Alliterative line:
"Sir, a side of spuds?"
I return to the house on Rohns
In my dreams and find that it
Surrounds a garden courtyard that was
Never there in waking but that somehow
In my dream memories always wasLooking southward on bright sunlight
Shining on grass long and lush I stand
At a window that was never there
But exists only in the temporal soupiness
Of a dreamer's homecomingShe stands with me looking at it
And on waking I tell her so
She pulls the door to enter
But only I know the idiosyncratic
Push and pull movements that open dream doorsAnd I lead holding her hand
Into the sunlight bright on us and the
Grass that whispers somewhere between
Knee and ankle as we walk surrounded by the
Weathered red brickwork of a dream
I saw Venus standing in the intersection
Of North Avenue and Wells Street
In predawn darkness on a winter morningIn the middle of a pedestrian crossing
She stood one arm raised above her head
An index finger half extended hailing a cabI saw her form a classical pose in a street empty
Of pedestrians and traffic rising from a sea of
Asphalt glistening with morning rain
(c)Doug Tanoury
2002
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