Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Porgy, Bess, Melville, and Me

Skies are blue; not a cloud drifts by.
Air is cool and dry.
There's a gentle breeze going nowhere.
Eastern mountains from fog unfurled.
Standing water in every pot’s dish
Emptied so mosquitoes cannot.
Birds pass by palm tree hands
Under commercial jets smaller than gnats.
Understand another typhoon is on the way,
So I want to take a long bike ride,
Do that today and go swimming tomorrow
Knowing rain and wind may come 
Barreling in, bulls eye, over Taichung.
Til the giant ball of moisture blows by
Tomorrow
When we make two trips to the hospital;
For her to have a blood test and
Then in the evening a consultation. 

I walked to pick a paperback
Edition of Moby Dick 
Because carrying a ten-pound illustrated volume,
From the bathroom towel rack 
To read a page each dump,
Wasn’t cutting it;
It would take two years to finish it,
If I stop at illustrations.

Returned I to read in the cafeteria 
Of the cancer building basement.
The greatest novel in English literature,
From a writer who died an unrealized master,
Alcoholic, pauper, clerk,
Reduced to unwanted fodder on a foreign bookshelf,
Free on Kindle,
And read on a toilet?
I can remedy that!
Put it in my pocket where it belongs,
Thick as it is,
Ride to a shady spot
Near three decommissioned tanks
On a retired sugarcane railroad.

Saturday evening's ballgame will be cancelled.
"An American in Paris" show in jeopardy
The Summer of Gershwin, a washout,
Reduced to a single blog entry.
Only relish each side of Porgy & Bess
In the living room
Time to digest each troubled survivor of Charleston,
Feel the pain of Bess blind-sided by Crown
No island picnic after seeing Porgy’s light;
Feel her tears after a week in delirium,
Back to the man who would takes her any way
Isn’t that what couples are best at?
When it rains all summer
And the excursions are to the hospital.

August 22, 2019
Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved