The
lilacs in these parts have mostly faded or gone to seed. In a day or
two they will be gone for the year. You would expect a poem about them to have been posted weeks ago when they were bursting, fresh, and vibrant. But while we were in Texas this week end my oldest
daughter, Carolynne Larsen Fox, posted a scan of a folded sheet of
type script on Facebook. It was a long
forgotten poem I gave her something just short of 20 years ago or so.
 |
| The ancient typescript that Carolynne found. |
Lilacs
is
autobiographical. It captures
memories of actual lilacs, the sweet
scent, and the color at various moments in my life since childhood. Some stanzas
reflect things that I have written about in various memoir stories, like playing
Davey Crockett in a Cheyenne back
yard. Others reference other poems—“riding
the evening day away” in Skokie, a
piece written when I was still in High
School.
 |
| Daughters Heather, left, and Carolynne, right with my cousin Linda at the weds,ding dinner at our Albany Street apartment. Note the framed caricatures on the wall behind them which were made at a visit to Sally's Stage a few month earlier. This picture doesn't show us, but her eyes were indeed green and she is wearing a lilac colored skirt, her signature color |
Another
is related to a still lost poem—the one Carolynne was looking for when she unearthed this one. That one was a little poem I wrote for her
not long after I became her stepfather. She was about ten years old and disconsolate
about her green eyes. I suspect she had been bullied or teased in school or in
the neighborhood in Chicago. She wept
uncontrollably. I was new at the daddy business, ham handed, and unsure of
myself. I wasn’t even sure if my hugs were welcome. So I scrawled a few lines on a tablet predicting that those green eyes would become
the feature guys would be drawn to. Not
much of a poem, if I remember, but one which she kept all these years since and
now was distressed not to be able to
find.
Back
to the poem at hand, reading it with fresh eyes made me realize that the annual here-and-gone lilacs were a metaphor for mortality, something that
the younger man who rolled a sheet of paper into an old manual typewriter didn’t realize.
I wasn’t a very good poet back then, not that
I am any kind of master now. I cringed
at a clumsy and unnecessary repetitive stanza opening “I remember” so I simply cut
that. There were a couple of other
minor tinkers.
But
here, resurrected like a zombie from a grave is Lilacs.
Lilacs
There were Wyoming lilac caves
from which we went
Crocketing
in that sweet aroma
twined
with the musk of dead
raccoon
nestled on our
scalps.
Grandma’s bathroom
tiled black and
coral,
pink flamingoed
mirrors,
crisp towels and
Lifebuoy
where parchment hands
clasped
lilac dusting puff
from the
mother-of-pearl canister
to finish Sabbath ablutions.
The two seat barber shop
with trout and geese,
Field & Stream and Argosy,
and Dizzy Dean’s
laconic call
where Swisher Sweets
and lilac water
splashed
on new mown skulls
made a Saturday man.
The Skokie nights
with lilacs in my well-worn
hat
I rode the evening
day away,
peddled into
adolescent reverie,
sang the long gone
partings
of two infant nations’
war,
chanted dreams of
glory verse
“When lilacs las in
the dooryard bloomed.”
The Chicago days
when only lilac could
wrap
Carolynne in fleecy
warmth
or cotton fluff,
green eyes, and Farah
Fawcett hair,
Rick Springfield and
Menudo,
a laughing daughter
of lavender secrets.
And now the ancient lilac grows
at the marked corner
of my lot
overgrowing three surveyors
lines,
half dead wood but
blooming yet
although box elder
and weedy elm
with youth throw
their vigor
through the tangles.
Lilacs, lilacs pace my life
And count my springs.
—Patrick Murfin
Circa 2000
No comments:
Post a Comment