For the introduction to this two-part series, please go to https://adrianspratt.com/poems-salvaged-from-1975-and-1976-part-i/
19. July 13, 1975
I wrote this poem during my summer working for a community action agency in rural North Carolina. As far as I can remember, that has little or nothing to do with the poem.
Party
Looking out on the lawn
Every face a happy shine,
I try to make myself believe.
Forcing only makes it leave.
20. August 14, 1975
Haiku
Stay far from me but
No farther than the distance
Would cause indifference.
21. August 14, 1975
In the South, there’s no escaping religion.
Follower
Where she sees the truth, she tells it.
Where she see the good, she lauds it.
What trust she’s shown, she keeps.
Where she hides, she sleeps.
What is true she sometimes wonders.
What is good she also ponders.
When her trust is scorned, she weeps.
Where she hides, she sleeps.
She smiles when Jesus speaks.
Where she hides, she sleeps.
22. Sunday, August 17, 1975 Untitled
The patterned people hitch their pants
And trail the preacher’s open arms
To the once and final dance.
23. Sunday, August 17, 1975
Sex was rampant in rural North Carolina, except when religion got in the way.
Adam and Eve
Oh dismal darling
I sighed when you said
We shouldn’t love.
So we talked at night,
On covered beds.
You said between us
Should be an innocence
That never dies.
Yet you were on my mind
Whenever I progressed
From abstract to concrete,
From map to small-town street.
And then it died.
All it took
Was the guilty word.
24. Sunday, August 17, 1975. Untitled
I can’t recall if this poem reflected me at a certain moment or concerned someone I knew at the time.
Photos from each stage
Of things you did in youth:
You contemplate your age
In frames and never move.
25. September 18, 1975
Frenzy
We are dancing, dancing, down the road,
Jumping from the sidewalk, reeling on the lawn,
Drummers coaxing us, on and on.
Flagstones shrug.
26. September 18, 1975
Long before college, a high school history teacher convinced me that objectivity isn’t achievable. It doesn’t mean subjectivity isn’t dangerous.
Free-For-All: A Haiku
There aren’t simple tales,
Or words with just one meaning.
There’s no referee.
27. September 23, 1975
I’m contending with Amherst college that strict adherence to Americans with Disabilities Act requirements isn’t enough; each disabled person is an individual. This poem tells me I thought along similar lines, albeit not about the ADA, as far back as 1975.
Leaves
Few see leaves one by one,
But rather in a single mass
As in a crowded station
Through which they pass.
28. September 23, 1975
Nonsense Rhyme
How can a tide flood
When rain falls in drops?
How can childhood end
If the clock forever stops?
How can a life be full
When knowledge comes in spots?
29. December 6, 1975
Responsibility
If you’d said you had no part in this
I’d have flared with bitterness.
Instead you took the blame.
Now remorse hammers my brain.
30. January 6, 1976
Dust
You’ll always be the one to say,
“After all, things turned out all right,”
Granting pain acceptance.
Far, how far this river heaves!
Streams come and feed its strength,
It hardly hesitates at bends,
Though the place it seeks is not yet seen.
What is in between?
The night has no response,
telephones cannot assist.
Will you keep going
With all the sordid risks
The journey will expose you to?
After Divorce
It was a time of scented hours
When love was looming flowers.
Now, a house too big for one
Where marriage died,
Swells your vein-dry soul.
We have private talks on public trains,
Find peace in your garden, poorly mown.
You cannot love now.
And I…?
Love is not loving
When it clings.
32. February 9, 1976
A dream made the past happen all over again.
Captive Once More
I’m staring at a street-light
From the dormitory, five
Roommates asleep, my watch
Marking the minutes
Till term’s end.
33. Undated.
The much longer original of this poem has the intro: “Book: The Scarlet Letter; Play: A Heart-Felt Love.”
Hester Prynne
We remember her as sweet and bidden
Like us, for heaven.
It’s a shame, it’s a public shame.
We demanded her partner’s name
She wouldn’t say, feckless child.
She got what’s comin’
While he’s off and runnin’,
And good lord, that just drives us wild!
Oh he’s gonna get it
When we know who done it:
If it takes more’n a minute,
Well, to hell and goddamn it.
34. Undated.
Signals
She frowns to make you think she’s old,
Smiles to get her way.
She needn’t have been so cold
To make me want to stay.
35. January, 1976
This concluding poem is the only one out of chronological sequence, though just by a month or so. Until reading the poem long after I wrote it, I’d forgotten all about that afternoon stroll on the Long Island Sound beach in Darien, Connecticut, where my family then lived.
Spire
Why walk
In midwinter by the sea,
Arms entwined as we talk?
What of
Your so rational desire
For a foreseen way?
Why love?
Why the heaven-gestured spire
In a silent sky?
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