The doors open on the East Greenlake Express.
I step out on to the sidewalk at Third and Marion.
There's a guy in a hospital robe with a fishing pole in front of me.
In a basso profundo voice he bellows, "Anyone who loves to play tennis??
Thursday tennis! Thursday tennis."
I tell him that McClellan sat with Army of the Potomac
outside of Washington D.C. for months believing he faced
a Confederate force three times the size of his own.
He called Lincoln a baboon in letters to his wife.
When his pickets scouted the forward batteries
of the rebel lines, they found them abandoned.
The supposed guns were actually logs.
'Quaker Guns', they called them.
Good name. I like it.
He wasn't listening. His eyes were pinned up the street,
waiting for the next bus.
"Anyone who loves to play tennis??"
2 comments:
These are gettin' too good to keep to these pages. You might wanna save a few, not post 'em, and instead send them off to a journal--almost all won't accept previously published material and blogs be generally considered published. Of course, you may not want anything to do with that print world, so... carry on as you will it. But these are very, very good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lovely two step in this one. Love the dichotomy (which really isn't), the contrast, the synthesis and sway.
Golly, that prolly makes no sense. But maybe *you* get what I'm saying. It's how the seemingly unrelated relate--what every great poet/artist reveals. Good job.
Thanks. I'm putting together some things to send about and see what happens. I like tacking things to this telephone pole though.
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