Fred Wolven

YOUNGER THAN I AM NOW, YOUNGER THAN I WILL EVER BE

(overheard from a story)

1. Grandpa, baseball and I

Newhouser’s autograph isn’t as significant today as listening to a Red Sox-Tiger
Sunday afternoon game was sitting on a daybed, Grandpa beside, gently in motion
in his rockin’ chair, a nickel Kind Edward cigar between his fingers,
smoke rings floating outward in front of me, my ears wide open straining
to hear the sportscaster call another Williams at bat, describing his fabled swing,
that crack of the wood splinter on the round sphere,
and certain to follow rounding of bases. I never wondered about greatness,
hearing those natural sounds broadcast over that small speaker from the wooden radio.
Each such sticky summer’s day was enough to last for the next week.
Now, why is it that I don’t remember how often the Tigers won,
that my parents only took me to games at Briggs Stadium a couple times,
that fishing alongside the river down the slope from the diamond was such pleasure
in those other summer’s evenings when Grandpa and I never caught even one fish.

2. Mom, violins and I

The many concerts, all those anonymous musicians peopling symphonies
from Minneapolis, from Cleveland, from Kansas City, or Toronto,
impressed me then, and enables me to smile in delight now when I listen to violins,
and practically nudges me into wishing I could draw a bow across the strings
anywhere near like Mom used to well into her later years.
Dad’s patient voice slips into my ear, but Mom’s sure hand settles me still.
Picasso wasn’t her art, but the lighthouse legacy is lasting,
the beach is there still, and memory is a vital, sure thing.
Though I was younger then than I am now, younger than I will ever be,
the museum captures and holds memories, framed and felt, beyond the life of canvas.

MAYBE AN ARMY OF SCIENTISTS

I wonder how Mom and Dad managed bundling us and all out stuff
into that station wagon every summer for all those years,
packing and unpacking every couple days, finding a new park,
another location we hadn’t visited before, a preferred spot to pitch the tent.
And then, that first trip on my own, up alongside a canoe stream
only to have the Canadian lynx scare everyone else out during the night.
The wildflowers, baby blue, buttery yellow, sometimes light pink,
spread across open meadows much like dandelions did over city park green slopes.

Why is it that the solitary bird, calling out only in the night,
cries, “Larry, Larry”? Maybe an army of scientists, combing the foothills,
might discover why a bear cub always ventures just a bit beyond
its mother’s sight, yet never quite farther than a scent carries.
Perhaps, but there is little reason, except what Frost might offer in rhyme
in season when the leaves must turn before the opening of a storm,
and in turning so, proffer insight into nature’s simple wonders.

When I asked, Mom was usually busy, and Dad would be falling asleep,
so I would follow a path into the field, cross the creek and enter the woods,
there to look under the rocks, behind the tree trunks and in spider webs.
What a delight it was, and still is, to uncover insects on backs of leaves,
to follow the quick darting black snake, to watch squirrels stuff their cheeks;
there were no foxes in my childhood days, but now they cross in my night lights.

ROETHKE WOULD HAVE BEEN DISAPPOINTED

I know that creek of my childhood probably wasn’t very wide;
I might almost be able to step across it now,
but those afternoons I would wander along its edge
watching small snakes moving nearly unseen in the grasses just beyond the banks;
there were always varied creatures beneath the rough mirrored surface,
most of which I was never able to name, neither then, nor even now,
and the Lincoln Library didn’t contain such knowledge.

Roethke would have been disappointed with me; he could identify
all matter of friends from jays to snakes to field mice to sloths.
Yes, I know, I’ve not seen a sloth and do not expect to;
I don’t believe zoos make a point of holding them.
I’ve only been to a zoo a few times.
The girls probably resent that I didn’t take them often.
Now that I recall, they missed quite a few things I didn’t do with them.

Copyright © 2005 Fred Wolven

Cover Design: Joseph McNair