"Mr. Hutchins - The Milkman" and other poems. Week 4 of National Poetry Month

Poem #22 Mr. Hutchins - The Milkman

It must have been about 1955
in Newport, Washington.
I was five or six, and I had
a friend named Curtis.
His dad was a milkman,
a profession now extinct,
like tyrannosaurus rexes and pterodactyls.
His dad drove a milk truck around
the small town
and delivered glass bottles of milk
to his customers early in the still,
dark mornings.
He put those bottles inside small
insulated boxes on porches.
I think they were quart bottles.
Housewives, usually, sometimes husbands,
would step out to the porch in their bathrobes
and retrieve that milk
to pour on the morning cereal
at the family breakfast.


Poem #23 April 23, 2017

Experiments in Gravity and Other Activities

Growing up,
my brother Jerry and I
would often play together until one of us got hurt,
usually him since I was
a few years older.
We’d jump our bikes over small ramps
we had built out of scrap lumber we found
in trash cans in alleys
until one of us crashed. Usually him.
Or we’d pile tumbleweed into concrete
basement foundations
awaiting home construction
in our Sandy, Utah, neighborhood
and jump, thinking
the tumbleweed would cushion our fall.
We mostly just got all scratched up
on that one.
One time, in Wyoming, I jumped out of a tree
in our backyard thinking mother’s
umbrella would act like a parachute.
I didn’t get hurt, but that umbrella
peeled back aerodynamically
and didn’t break my
fall worth a lick.
These experiments in gravity
more often proved gravity than not.
Another time in a non-gravitational
activity, we unwound a golf ball’s
wrapped rubber core and found out
how many times you could
wrap that long rubber band
around our house on Coffeen Avenue.
I think it was four times.


Poem #24 Apirl 24

The Summer of Love

This summer is the fiftieth
anniversary of The Summer of Love for
Me and Jimi and Janis
at Monterey,
and Bobby McGee in Baton Rouge.
Janis from Texas.
Jimi the paratrooper from Seattle.
Me, the kid from Nebraska.
Freedom’s just another word
for nothing left to lose, we said.
Purple Haze you say.
Light my fire, they said.
Come on, baby, we said,
Let’s cruise the Haight.
I was there that summer of 1967.
I didn't get to Woodstock in '69, but
I was in the Haight that year. San Francisco.
Flower power, hippies, reefer, fog.
I was listening to the Doors, and Jimi, and Janis, and Eric.
I was sixteen and sitting in the back
of my family’s 1963 Rambler station wagon
listening to the Doors, and Jimi, and Janis
on my little transistor radio
as we drove those Haight and Ashbury streets.
Not in a Porsche or a Mercedez-Benz.
And no reefer.
But I was on fire, smoking purple haze,
feeling free on those warm San Francisco nights.
Better to be grateful than dead.


Poem 25 April 25

Carhenge

I’ve been reading about Stonehenge today.
You know that circular structure of big rocks
near Wiltshire, England, thought to have been
built four or five thousand years ago.
Much has been made
about how difficult it must have been to
move those rocks long distances.
But one theory is that
glaciers conveniently deposited many of those
stones of various compositions
right near there for the picking.
Perhaps a burial site originally,
it is now a venue for acoustic guitar music,
spiritual musings, juggling acts,
and other events.
Carhenge, near Alliance, Nebraska, USA,
was made in 1987 out of old cars and trucks
painted grey by the Jim Reinders family
in memory of Jim’s father, who had
an interest in Stonehenge, and placed
in a circle to mimic Stonehenge.
It is most unlikely that Carhenge will
still be there in four thousand years.
Carhenge is located on 10 acres of land
donated by the family to “The Friends of Carhenge,”
a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving
this large full-scale art installation.
In an astronomical event of
no particular significance on August 21, 2017,
Carhenge will be in the direct path
of the Total Solar Eclipse at 17:49 (UT) or 11:49 (MT).
There will be traffic.
I've been to Carhenge serveral times,
on hot, windy, summer days usually, and
have noted the whistling winds,
and dusty breezes swirling
around those cars, and enjoyed the
various other art installations.
I, and others, in a demonstration
of reducto ad adsurdum,
will be building miniature Carhenges
out of Hot Wheels spray-painted grey,
placed in kitty litter
in large cake pans this weekend at
Platte River State Park for a church
family-retreat activity.
I started a fund-raising effort
a few weeks ago to raise
$500,000,000 to build a life-sized
replica of the three major Giza pyramids
out of crushed automobiles at the
Carhenge site. I've raised $1.85 so far.


Poem 26 April 26, 2017

An Old Recipe

My mother used to make a hamburger,
rice, ketchup concoction I really liked.
Mixed together in the right proportions,
you had a pretty tasty and economical meal
for a family.
In later years, we would add green peppers,
either chopped and added to the mix,
or cut in half, cooked, the rice mixture
then spooned into the pepper halves.
I still make that for myself now and again.
I add chopped onions, maybe some
minced garlic, and parmesan cheese, too.
Mother used to add canned green beans or peas,
or later, frozen,
to the plate for that sense of dietary balance
before the bell peppers became the
vegetable of choice.


Poem 27 April 27

Garage #50

I like my garage although
I park my car outside in the parking lot.
I park my motorcycle in there to keep
it out of the weather.
My apartment manager
let me know yesterday that
workers would need access to my garage and
all the other garages in that line of 20 garages
built into that hillside next Monday, so the workers
can tighten bolts on some retainer plates on the
ends of rods drilled through the
walls of those garages and some unknown distance
into the hillside so they don't implode.
Mine is on the south end,
of that line of garages built into that hillside,
so there are two walls with those retaining plates,
two on the east side and four on the south side.
Getting access is not as easy as it sounds.
I’ve got stuff in that garage
that has to be moved from the south and east walls.
Layers of tools, painting equipment, other
miscellaneous collections of years of
home remodeling and
jack-of-all-trades, get-by-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth
(as though teeth have skin) work
for 15 years, all on a shelf system that has to be
unladed and moved to allow access to those
retainer rods. It’s something like an
archaeological dig site in North America
that I read about this morning
on a facebook post. A mastodon skeleton, or it
might have been a woolly mammoth,
was uncovered with some evidence
that a human species may have existed in
North America far, far earlier than previously thought:
rock chips, smashed bones, the slightest of clues.
As for me, I will carefully remove layers of evidence
of my own presence at this time and in this place.
I don’t really need those halogen portable lamps,
that 40 year old turntable, those half-dozen five gallon
plastic buckets filled with screwdrivers, and tiling tools,
hammers, that shop vac, or power washer,
paint brushes, and miscellaneous tools used for
many tasks, or those five paint trays,
or even that fake Christmas tree; but they
still have utility, even meaning, for me, and lord knows
if I discard any of it, I will need it the following week.
I’ve thought of selling some of the
stuff in a “garage” sale. And I still might.
I recently bought a small electrical generator
so I could power my compound miter saw
out there when I make stretcher frames.
But for now, I’ll move it all around,
rearrange it like I have my life as
needed when circumstances changed.
I’ll discard that extra double mattress and
box springs I have out there, too.
I’ll put that shelving system to the north wall
instead of the south wall so that next spring when
those workers have to tighten those bolts, it won’t be
such a large task.


Poem 28 Apr. 28

Weather

A cold front has bisected Nebraska
from the southernmost western corner
to the northeast Missouri River curve.
The weather radar image is blue on the north and west side
and green on the south and east,
and that temperature demarcation
makes all the difference.
Through the window of my apartment,
it's just all grey out there, but on the
radar image snow is blue and rain is green.
There is a counter-clockwise motion to this
weather system in the middle of the country.
And I can watch it on my laptop computer
in animation mode and see
the motion of the snow and the rain
as it all gradually swirls like a dancer’s skirt might
at a large-scale, slow motion, square dance
pirouette in a country barn out there
in the middle of Nebraska.