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Hopscotch Bacon
Hopscotch Bacon
Copyright © September 21, 2019 by Douglas W. Jerving.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, except
as provided by USA copyright law.
1
We’d go down into the thatches near that bend
Where the willows shot their tines among the weeds
Along the riverbank, becoming part
Of the ebb and flow that ran a corner
Foresting us both from their prying eyes
Seeking, they, to know what we were up to,
And loose us of all our fears of daylight
In those shadows until the patterns of our limbs
Dissolved and she was still not satisfied.
2
In Autumn weather whether rain or heat
We went among the orchards for apples
Or farmer’s markets searching for delights
To tantalize our skillets while we learned
The art of making house a home before
My proposals, to many, finally
Convinced her to accept my vows of life.
Yet even then she could not be denied
That singular longing her heart so implored.
3
“I am to far from nature” she decried.
“How do you write when you don’t even know
What you are talking about? Or how paint
Heaven without the earth you dwell upon
Become first real to you and shades it gray
So that eternity seems far away?”
We married in that spring while it was cold.
4
“I cannot fell the night like some old tree.
I am not good at anything but words.
How do I answer importunity?”
My fortunes, love or lust could never serve
Her insatiate need for something past
Never to be recovered like a bird
Flown, stumbling, at last from the nest
But falling to the ground before the dawn.
5
Her dream was like a recipe now gone;
Like patterns practiced over many years
Remembered only by those who had watched
Intently as children not taking notes,
Forgotten as their youth went post-modern,
Then turned to in reverie, they could not
Recall what ever it was that made it special.
6
The name is all the child within recalls:
“Hopscotch bacon.” Or some strange thing as that.
Just a quirky phrase now memorialized,
Or the long-lost essence furtively turned
Upon the nose at some odd place or time,
Now meaningless, still pulling hard the reins
So that the horse inside one’s self, herself,
Can never quite figure out what sort of thing
It is. -- Not that, but something else missing
Even more desperately than life itself.
Missing far more than just hopscotch
Or bacon, or a Grandma’s favored recipe.
7
The recipe is gone, but not the quest
To find it or to make it up again
Whatever part of hell or heaven we
Must add to bring back dust from fairy dust
Or life from death, we pursue all the sky.
Discontent that meaning might be all
That lies now right before our own two eyes
We fail to entrain the common place.
The mundane daily life is still the best.
8
Maybe it was life itself, or just a finch
Calling the morning air before the heat
Bowed the heads of the sunflowers she sought.
Maybe the eternal bath of history
Now dark stained upon the human genome,
An archetype embedded, unrecalled,
Still bidding back to redded tooth and claw
Like some old Jack London novel written
Deep upon her soul.
She could not stay.
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Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at
djerving@newedisongazette.com.
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