EARLY HALLOWEEN MORNING

Here are two poems that go together,

for Halloween.

~

Mother, 20, getting off a boat in Savannah,

after a boat trip to New York. c.1929

The Perfect Intro

“A bandleader asked me to sing once,”

Mother would say

when she’d be listening

to a tune on the radio.

Oh, Mother,

I wish I could have seen you

stepping up on the bandstand

your heart beating wildly

the clarinets playing

the perfect intro.

The handsome bandleader

with a dashing moustache

is tipping his head

catching your eye

as you smile and lean into a

30’s microphone

with it’s silver art deco grillwork

and sing:

“Nothin’ could be finah’

Than to be in Carolina,

In the maw-nin’”

You would notice

the man with the cigarette

lean forward on his elbow.

A brunette raising her

pencilled eyebrow in approval.

It is the fifteen minutes of fame

I wish for you

because I knew you’d been

too shy to say

“Yes.”

 ~ ~ ~

An interlude of recent photos

The colorful heirloom tomatoes

dew on ornamental grass

lavender blooms of rosemary

and now . . .

Early Halloween Morning

Maybe Mother’s soul is rising

out of a dreamy float,

or a floaty dream.

Someone is nudging her saying,

“Wake-up, it’s All Hallow’s Day,

your soul can return to earth.”

“Oh,” says Mother, “I was just

dreaming of my daughter, Charlotte.

She’s writing a book about me. 

Maybe I can float down close enough

to see what she’s written”

“C’mon, then,” says Gypsy Edgeworth,

an imp of a flapper angel

who smokes and drinks

Koolaid with gin on the sly,

behind some thunderclouds

where she also hides her Luckies.

“Look!” says Gypsy, “there’s

the book . . . can you read what it says?

  . . . Here, I’ll hold the firefly lantern closer.”

“Oh,” says Mother smiling,

“She’s put me on a bandstand

next to a handsome man with a mustache!

I’m leaning into a microphone

and singing, ‘Carolina In the Morning.’”

“Son of a gun!,” says Gypsy.

“Thank you, Shug,”

she whispers in my ear, 

“for making a dream come true.”

~ ~ ~

 stay tuned . . .

~ ~ ~