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A POET'S TALE
A Poet's Tale
By Jerry Jimston
Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.
Horace
"Pomes! All you know is dumb-ass pomes!"
Arnie looked up in exasperation and closed his collection of Longfellow poetry. "Agnes," he pleaded, "I was just taking a breather from all the chores to sit back and relax for a moment with-"
"Them goddammed pomes!" Her hair still wild from the night's sleep, Agnes shoved and sent the vacuum cleaner rocketing across the floor to where Arnie sat. It slid to a halt in front of him.
"Them goddamned pomes are going to be the death of you, Arnold Grimsby! I don't give a big flyin' shit if you stay up all night, but we got stuff needs to be done and I'll be damned if you're gonna sit on yer ass and read and write stupid-ass POMES all day." She wiped her hands on her apron, turned her portly backside to him, and stormed back into the kitchen, muttering, "Goddamned pomes. What'd I ever do?"
Arnie sighed and tucked his book safely under the recliner. He grasped the vacuum cleaner. Flipping the switch, he absent mindedly began sliding it across the carpet. "Shhhh-waaaa-shhhhh-waaa"...the sound of the vacuum began to lull him, and he pictured a piece of music with a background of "shhhhh-waaaaah-shh-"
"You silly son of a bitch, if you keep doing the same spot long enough, there won't be no carpet left!" She yanked the vacuum from his hands. "Get your ass outside and get to work on that fence before you forget how to do it. Get out-hear me? Out!"
The pile of fresh boards for the new fence was, indeed, waiting for him as he stepped out into the heat and found his hammer. He had cemented the last post in place yesterday and put up the skeleton framing.
He squinted into the sky. The blistering sun of the Sacramento Valley was merciless to those who showed it no respect. He would work more slowly than the day before, when he had grown dizzy in the hot valley wind and taken refuge under a stream of water from the garden hose. Not good, for a man of seventy.
He grabbed the first board and steadied it against the frame. With several nails drooping from his mouth, he tacked it up and stepped back.
The nails and hammering squeezed the pine juice from the board, and when the smell reached his nose he remembered his young days as a forestry worker high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Pine needles and sunlight had streamed through a cloud of limbs overhead as his feet sank in a cushion of moss and mulch. Arnie paused, smiling, and began composing a poem in his mind.
"a smell of pine that lingers in your nose
and sap that sticks to your fingers,
clinging desperately to days past,
to days long gone..."
"Listen, dickhead, if you like, I'll take one of them boards and shove it up your ass if that's what it takes to get the work done around here!"
Arnie jumped and looked around. He hadn't heard the window open or seen Agnes glaring at him. He snatched another board and hastily hammered it into place.
The day passed miserably as Arnie worked on the fence. Once, he slipped into the house for a glass of water and ice; he couldn't see her, but he knew Agnes was somewhere, her "radar" tracking his every move. Quickly, he guzzled his water and fled back into the summer heat.
Bam, bam, bam. Grabbing the next board, he held it in place with one hand, grabbed a nail from his mouth, and hammered it in.
The sun began dipping into the west, but the heat for the next few hours remained unrelenting. Arnie paused from time to time to wipe his face with a bandanna--and moved on to the next section of fence.
Arnie gasped with exhaustion and finally squeezed against the house for what little shade was left. There remained only a few feet of fenceline to complete, he noted. There would be plenty of time to finish it in the morning, before the sun rose too high.
Pulling a stick of Doublemint gum from his pocket, he peeled away the damp wrapping and popped the gum into his mouth.
Arnie tried to remember when life had been better, quieter. That was a long time ago. A younger, sweeter Agnes had delighted in his poems. During their courtship, she had sat under the pines and by the streams and giggled as he had weaved and spun words to tickle her imagination.
It had been a delightful romance, many years ago. She had loved his romantic side; the part that seemed to fly in the clouds with such ease, murmuring of strange and beautiful places and kings and their queens and streams that bubbled with magical sounds...
The death of their child had embittered her. Their lives had never been easy, and financial hardships had beset them mercilessly as he struggled to make even a meager living. With each year, the misfortunes of life had beaten his wife into unyielding steel, leaving her a woman whose every word was a comment on the worthlessness of even staying alive.
It always puzzled Arnie that he had managed to remain so much the same, in spite of his many trials. Perhaps, he thought, it was because he had always clung to that mystical world of poetry and found refuge in it at the worst of times. Often, he had tried to share this comfort with Agnes, reading in soothing tones the words of Frost or Longfellow or Dickinson. She would leap up, angrily, and turn up the television volume to drown him out.
Long ago, Arnie had given up sharing his inner world and now sought to find it in secretive places and times. He would keep a solemn face, yet celebrate inside as Agnes left for a Tupperware party or a shopping trip. Then, he would race up to his study, prop open the door so he could hear her return, and eagerly open one of his treasured books. Occasionally, he would become so engrossed in his reading that he would miss the sound of her car pulling in. Startled by her shouts and the doors slamming as she stalked him, he would race to hide all evidence of his crime as she marched up the stairs to find him.
Grabbing a mop or dust rag, he would smile innocently, heart racing, and stutter, "I was only doing a few things to surprise you!"
Agnes would peer around suspiciously, grunt, "Humph!", and march back down the stairs.
The truly golden times of his life were when she left for a night or several days to visit friends or relatives. With hours on his hands, Arnie would grab whatever writing paper was available. He would charge up to the desk in his study on the second floor of the house. He would use these precious moments of freedom to sit and write his own poetry, hands shaking with delight and words spinning forth so fast that he would get confused and throw sheets aside in frustration.
Such opportunities were rare.
At dinners, Agnes was merciless in haranguing Arnie in front of guests. She could render any dish tasteless as she launched into her favorite subject in front of company.
"We went on a cruise to Mexico," she would begin. "You know what eight-ball here brings along? A tuxedo? No, he forgets that. He brings along a suitcase full of his pome books! Thinks he's gonna waste his cruise money sitting up on the deck staring at girls and reading all these pomes to anyone that'll listen."
"Can you imagine?"
Crowing, Agnes would continue as their company fidgeted nervously.
"People thanked their lucky stars for me, I guarantee you, because as soon as I saw what he was up to, I snatched them books and started throwing them over the side, one by one, right there in front of him and everyone. Yes sir, was a good thing I was there."
Gazing at the unfinished fence, Arnie wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed. No matter. The years had passed, and he had learned to take what pleasures he could get at the times he could get them. A breeze blew along the side of the house, announcing the approach of evening.
Laying down the hammer and wiping his eyes, Arnie opened the door and slipped into the house. Somewhere, in the back, he could hear Agnes running water into a bucket and muttering about dirty windows. Stealthily, he slipped around the corner of the dining room, down the hall and tiptoed up the stairs to his study. Quietly, he closed and locked the door.
Rarely did he dare lock it but, Agnes being in the house, he didn't want to risk her catching him writing. If she pounded on the door, he would have time to hide his hand-written sheets, casually unlock the door, and swear he'd only been taking a nap. She would be skeptical, but would probably accept it with a few quick curses about his taking a nap while she cooked.
With a deep breath of relief, Arnie seated himself at the desk in front of the window and, spreading out a blank piece of paper, looked out.
The shadows of the summer evening were beginning to settle into the yard below, and the only direct sunlight remaining was touching the tops of the highest trees, painting them a brilliant yellow. Arnie loved the view from the second floor. In the distance, a haze had colored the mountains a strange pastel of grayish blue. The snow-capped peak of Mount Shasta, a volcano, loomed high on the horizon. As his mind relaxed, Arnie remembered a poem by Longfellow:
I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
It murmurs and whispers still:
A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
Arnie smiled as the mythical Hesperides Islands, with trees bearing golden apples, passed through his mind. The quiet of the summer afternoon began to play on his imagination. Unable to resist the urge, he picked up his pencil and scooted his chair into the desk, smiling and pausing only to glance out the window at the scenery.
The crash of the aluminum ladder startled him and he dropped the pencil. With a clattering bounce, the ladder came to rest against the sill of the window from which he was looking.
There was a heavy clambering of feet and Arnie was suddenly staring directly into his wife's hostile eyes.
Holding a squeegee and water bucket in one hand and gripping the top of the ladder with the other, her mouth began moving. The sound was muffled by the glass and, without thinking, Arnie rose from his chair and slid open the window.
"-leave me to take care of these goddamned windows by myself while you sit on your ass and write your weirdo pomes. Well, I'll tell you, you worthless sack of shit, I didn't climb all the way up here to watch you get away with that! NOW I know what the hell you do up here. When I get in there, you'd better get out of my way, you dildo, because I'm gonna burn everything you have in there!"
Arnie sighed. He leaned across the desk and gave the ladder a push.
It was quiet for a long time, except for the sound of Arnie's pencil on the paper. Assured of quiet, he picked up the telephone.
**The End**
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