Close Your Eyes and Think of Cleveland

[AuntShecky]

Close Your Eyes and Think of Cleveland

Last night when I struggled to close the blinds,
I promised myself: “Tomorrow when I reopen these
I'll see clusters of evergreens and a cloudless sky
mirrored in an inland sea.” This morning’s yank
uncovered the same old stark cement,
same unobstructed view of disappointment
undisturbed, still parked there.

Magic thoughts ride horses wishing for a longer road,
which winds up looking at a dead-end. Change,
that engine of desire, stalls, chokes. It’s no
game, this life, yet we cheer it on, like fans
watching their team lose, season after season.
We tell ourselves next year will be different,
and all the while, we wait.

We're all lined up, it’s said, on the same shore; it’s not
supposed to matter which side of the lake we're on.
Next door to mansions, shacks should know their place.
In squalid cities, trash cans overflow
with the waste of crumpled dreams. Tidy
is the sentiment that failure and a lack
of success are not the same.

Who still believes that sarcasm has no soul
or sincerity necessarily has a heart,
when earnestly we're always told
we're not alone; we do not suffer alone?
For amid the dust of a darkened room
each one of us knows that we are,
and we do.

Being and not having is no curse, and hope
beats memory any day. Alive or not
there are some I once knew well, and some
I no longer know, yet still remember,
and others I have never met at all
but somehow know. With any of them
there’s nothing that I'd want to share –

–except the thought that next time they open
their blinds their sorrow-laden eyes will rally
with a brighter glimpse; and for you, this drink
from an imaginary well is on me, peeking
through a knothole in the left field wall. Let’s
raise an empty glass and toast the sky.
(You know who you are.)

[AuntShecky]

It's probably bad form, but I'm bumping this with a shameless
solicitation for comments. Blast it to shreds, just don't be shy.
Thank you!

[~Sophia~]

I'm glad you did otherwise, I would have been deprived. I love this - in it's entirety!

[Sapphire]

Blast it to shreds? :eek2: No way. This is great. I especially like the line

Magic thoughts ride horses wishing for a longer road
It is dreamy and hopeful (I was so sure the opening of the curtains would give a wonderful day after the first lines), yet down to earth.

hope / beats memory every day
:) I am going to keep that one locked into my brain.

[qimissung]

This one's a home run, AuntShecky. I'm delighted to have made its' acquaintance! :)

[AuntShecky]

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you Sophia, Sapphire, and q--
for a while there I thought this one was going to be ignored, like
Cleveland, the city with the potential to be beautiful, yet often
called "the mistake by the Lake," or the team with lots of power
which hasn't been in a WS since Hector was a rookie. But--
what the speaker asks in this piece is:
In a world of failure and squalor, are we asking hope and imagination to do too much?

[qimissung]

Probably. From where I currently am in life, yes. From the standpoint of global warming, yes. Because we still do not take care of the planet as we should, yes. Because we still fight wars, so yes. Because we still believe in terrorizing people who do not believe as we do; because we don't take care of the homeless or the mentally ill as we should-so yes.

[Virgil]

Hey that's wonderful Aunty. *applause* :)

[~Sophia~]

Sometimes I think, it's all so overwhelming and we have to set out sights lower, not higher. If we all just try to make a small difference in those things that are in our direct bead line, the whole world could change. Little steps. Live in a concrete jungle, plant a tree. The neighbor pummels their kid, make a phone call. Little steps.

The poem is really wonderful. Really!

[AuntShecky]

Many thanks Virgil and Sophia (again.) And q, your reply (#7 above) is like a prose poem in itself.

[firefangled]

AuntShecky, the question you are asking here is asked very well. I thought the voice of this wove itself around a very complex rumination and never got lost. Way to go!

For me you answered the question up front when the speaker had enough hope to even open the blinds the next day. And then, of course, the end toast is an Amen to that.

Hope is a tough and ragged soul to even be around at all after so many millenia.

I would refer you to a poem by Jane Mead, "Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty." I think I typed it out once. I'll send it to you.

Well done, Auntie! I think this one was a home run.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, firefangled, and for the Jane Mead poem as well.
I love it.

[Niamh]

this really is an amazing poem. :)

[Stargazer86]

I really enjoyed reading this. Great poem

[PrinceMyshkin]

You realize, I hope, that I've had no access to my computer for a week after my hard drive failed otherwise I'd have been all over this, with line after line and philosophical observation after philosophical observation that thrilled the HELL out of me, e.g.:

Magic thoughts ride horses wishing for a longer road,
which winds up looking at a dead-end.

and this:
Tidy
is the sentiment that failure and a lack
of success are not the same.

and


Who still believes that sarcasm has no soul
or sincerity necessarily has a heart,
when earnestly we're always told
we're not alone; we do not suffer alone?
For amid the dust of a darkened room
each one of us knows that we are,
and we do.

and

Alive or not
there are some I once knew well, and some
I no longer know, yet still remember,
and others I have never met at all
but somehow know.

and


and for you, this drink
from an imaginary well is on me, peeking
through a knothole in the left field wall. Let’s
raise an empty glass and toast the sky.
(You know who you are.)

Holy cow, Aunty!

[PrinceMyshkin]

How could I overlook the allusion in the title, if indeed you intended it, which reminds me of the joke about a rather prim Englishwoman who takes her daughter aside on her wedding eve and counsels her:

"There are certain things you may be expected to do, that aren't very pleasant. When that happens I advise you to close your eyes and think of England!"

[AuntShecky]

Well, Prince, that's exactly where the title came from, except "Cleveland" substitutes for England (same vowel sound,
same trochee.) The baseball allusion was the first to come up when I thought "Cleveland," -- that and the big lake.

By the by(e), yesterday afternoon I was in the Norman Rockwell museum, and the first SatEvePost cover that struck my eye was the one that consists nearly completely of a wooden fence with a
hole in it showing a baseball game in progress. What a weird coincidence!

Thanks for your comments.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Well, Prince, that's exactly where the title came from, except "Cleveland" substitutes for England (same vowel sound,
same trochee.) The baseball allusion was the first to come up when I thought "Cleveland," -- that and the big lake.

By the by(e), yesterday afternoon I was in the Norman Rockwell museum, and the first SatEvePost cover that struck my eye was the one that consists nearly completely of a wooden fence with a
hole in it showing a baseball game in progress. What a weird coincidence!

Thanks for your comments.

Oh, Norman Rockwell and the Sat Eve Post. That was so long ago, in another galaxy, far, far away!

In a very loosely related matter, do check out the brilliant graphics by Andre Carrilho, e.g. pg 65 of the April 27 issue of The New Yorker and pg 69 of the May 4 issue.