When Lilacs Last in my Backyard Bloomed

When Lilacs Last in my Backyard Bloomed
Christopher Bogart

When lilacs last in my backyard bloomed,
I wasn’t there to see them.

When I moved in, almost fifteen years ago,
I saw only the short stump of a cut down bush,

sitting in the soil by the chain link fence,
at the farthest edge of the property.

I had guessed the previous owner just didn’t like lilacs,
but I did, so I decided to give the little stump a chance.

Each spring, I went out to the back fence
to see what had become of the little lilac stump.

Each spring, new growth from that stump rose up and away
from the fence to face the warmth of each new spring sun.

Its leaves sprouting from its lengthening stems,
bright new, green and full of hope. But bud less.

For the first few years, new hope was
born again and again in those bright green shoots.

I tore down the chain link that kept it captive
and built a new wood fence, yet green was all it gave.

By year ten, I had all but given up on my lavender dreams,
glancing, only occasionally, out the back door to the border beyond.

In time, I accepted, as the stump seemed to accept, that
its role would be foliage, fill for the space at the back fence.

I glanced out only occasionally, afraid to hope,
afraid to see, afraid to dream deep purple dreams.

Then, one day, in the spring of the fifteenth year,
I heard a faint call from the stump at the back wood fence.

I approached to a view of its bright green leaves, new growth, new life,
and crowned with the lavender buds of my hopes and my dreams.

Summerhill Market

Over the last six months, I have cut out most of the carbs and sugar, and walked each night after work. And, predictably, I have lost 40 pounds. This morning, someone at work commented on how I should shop for new clothes because the ones I had on were swimming on me. I responded, "Yeah, I feel like Dondi." The look I got back at that comment let me know that they had never heard about the Italian orphan from World War II that was adopted by US soldiers and brought back to the United States. In short, he didn't have a clue what I meant. And I began to think about the little orphan, and a lot of other memories I have of the past, memories that I find fewer and fewer people each day to share with.

When I was 11 years old, we moved from a housing project in Queens to Spotswood, NJ. It was the first house I had ever lived in. And the red Schwinn was the first two-wheel bike I ever owned. And at any opportunity I could find, I rode down the hill to Summerhill Market, a grocery store that slaughtered its own meat and made its own ice cream. It was 1957.

Summerhill Market
Christopher Bogart

It was a bright red Schwinn bicycle that took me on that beautiful spring day in the May of my twelfth year to Summerhill Market on the important errand of replenishing the milk and bread supply. I felt the hot sun beat on my back as I cut through Clover Estates, traveling downhill on the fastest route to the only grocery store for miles. As I approached the bend in the road, I saw the market ahead of me, a small squat red brick building surrounded by fields of cattle waiting to be slaughtered by the butcher from the abattoir in the back of the store. I rode up to the silver bicycle rack in front of the store and braked, throwing gray gravel in all directions. Once I had pulled the bike into the silver rack, I entered the store.

The light was dim. It took me awhile to adjust my eyes from the bright sunlight of the world outside to the muted light within. The cool smell of damp wood and raw meat permeated the place. As I walked down the aisle to fetch the gallon jug of milk and the loaf of bread, I heard the muffled voices of the register clerk discussing the day’s events with a lone customer, punctuated only by the tapping of the keys and the register bell’s plaintive ring. Once my purchases were in hand, I had one more stop to make before checking out. In a deep freezer in the front of the store, I plunged my hand through frozen mists to emerge with a container of homemade, vanilla bean ice cream. Pulling off the container lid, the cool sweet smell of vanilla bean flecks assailed my nose, masking for a minute, all of the dank smells of the store. As I deeply inhaled the top of the container, visions of dessert tonight invaded my thoughts, driving out all that preceded them. I flipped the cover back on, bottling the ice cream genie for now, and proceeding to the counter to pay for my purchases.

Once outside the store, I mounted my trusty red Schwinn and with a push, I coasted across Summerhill Road and started peddling up the long hill to home, careless, carefree and warm with the sun on my face, and secure in the safety of my youth, a time that would turn out to be much shorter than I had realized.

From the window of my car I now see that there is a strip mall there on Summerhill Road. The field of cows and the squat brick building are gone. Replacing them are a video store, a Quick Check, a dry cleaners, and a place that offers a wide selection of CDs.

Rose Garden

Rose Garden
Christopher Bogart


Bleached white bones,
jagged,
sharp-edged,
Point like bony fingers,
ribs,
claws,
Paw dry soil
In a fruitless effort
to escape
their timeless shame,
Their buried fate.

Barren bits of lime,
point to
their crime,
The failure of their task
to guard
their charge,
their mollusk meat,
stolen
To feed the need
to survive.

I dig now
deep,
deeper.
The metal of my shovel tip
hits grit,
scoops sand, and
Their buried bones,
A treasure trove of shell,
In their earthen grave,
so wide,
so deep,
Forever keeping me
from my dreams
of roses.

Published in Saggio Poetry Journal (Fall, 2008)

Spring Sundays

When I began this blog, I made the promise to myself that I would write every day in order to improve myself as a writer and to open up my writing to comment with the hope of creating a conversation about writing and poetry, in particular. In order to find original areas to write about, I have looked to my life, each and every day, to provide me with inspiration. In that regard, I have been somewhat successful because much of what I have written about came from moments in my day, or in my week, that have inspired me to write something new, or to review some of what I have already written and revise it. Or sometimes, just preface it with new insights into the topics I have already written about.

This week was Holy Week, and the inspiration I drew from was insights into a religion I have been studying off and on for a lifetime. I was born a Roman Catholic, attended Catholic grammar schools, a seminary and a Catholic high school, and a Catholic Jesuit college, in which I was obliged to take a minor in theology, Catholic theology. As Mr. Macawber, in David Copperfield, used to say "In short..." the last few posts have been meditations on the religious. However, this is not a religious blog, nor was it ever meant to be. My religion has been a part of my life experience. However, my values and my spirituality I have drawn from numerous spiritual sources, not all of them Catholic. I studied Hebrew in college and said Kaddish for a year when my uncle died. I have prayed with Lakota Indians each month for over a year, and have read the Koran as well as the The Bhagavad Gita. What I have learned from these experiences is what the Hindus have believed for a long time, that there are many roads up a mountain, but there is only one mountain and one peak. While I am most familiar with the preaching of charity, love from my own Christian faith, I have found those same values in other religions as well. I value these principles, and get angry when those that preach them fail to live up to them.

So, today is Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus' resurrection and our redemption. It falls at a time of year; spring, when nature experiences a beautiful rebirth as well. As Jesus rose from the grave, so nature awakens from a cold winter. The poem I have chosen for today is one that does not have an overt religious message, but is a celebration of this rebirth. Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

Spring Sundays
Christopher Bogart

Every Sunday morning
should be a morning in Spring.

Spring Sundays enlighten the sky
with a peaceable hue, peacock blue,
to backlight blossoms of pink pale,
linen white. They bud bright
from bare branch
to slow falling avalanche,
petaling satin snow
down
to the warming brown ground
below.

A gentle breeze
meanders through leaves of
pale green new,
rustles limbs
that brush to the touch
from just so much
as an errant whisper,
a gentle bar of
the wind’s wild tune to
rattle ‘round the memory,

Composing a song
we can hear all day long.

Damned for all time?

I always thought Judas got a bum rap. Most believe that he was a money hungry traitor, sold Jesus to his enemies for thirty pieces of silver, then hung himself in despair and was damned for all time.

However, if you have read the posts on my blog for the last few months, you must know by now that I find pat explanations just too easy, and probably not true. In the three part poem I posted in January called “Triptych of the Lamb,” I identify society’s cast-offs with the traditional role of Jesus as sacrificial lamb. I did that because, to me, the message of personal redemption has little or no meaning unless it applies to even “the least of my brethren.” And that, particularly in a society that claims to be “godly,” their rejection is, to me, the ultimate sin against the man that taught us to love our enemies, and to take care of even those whose need is greatest.

Judas was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus. He had been with Jesus throughout his ministry; and, when all of the others ran in the opposite direction when he was finally arrested, he did not run, he acted. However, the crux (no pun intended) of this debate is what that act consisted of, and motivated it. If his motives were monetary, then why throw the money at the feet of the high priests when he found out what was going to happen to Jesus? When Jesus told him, at the Last Supper, to do what he had to do quickly, it seemed that Jesus knew and approved of his actions. Finally, if Jesus came to save all of mankind, how was Judas left out within hours of that sacrificial death?

The story is told by the evangelists and is what it is. Matthew, in Chapter 27, has only these words about the event. Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients, saying: I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. But they said: What is that to us? Look thou to it. And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed: and went and hanged himself with an halter. (Matthew, 27, 3-5) The other three evangelists say nothing of the event.

I am certainly not about to enter into a debate on the veracity of the scripture. However, I will be more than happy to weigh in on the debate on Judas’ motives. His actions during and after the crucifixion make more sense if we believe that Judas did what he thought Jesus wanted. If you believe that he was the son of God, as Judas did, then he must know what he’s doing. It became less understandable to Judas when Jesus actually allowed the Romans to execute him. Weighed down by the guilt of his “participation” in Jesus’ death and unable to understand what had happened, I believe that he forgot the message of forgiveness that Jesus had preached, or felt that he was beyond that forgiveness. Had he thought about that message before he acted, he might have been able to forgive himself for his participation in Jesus’ death. I also believe that it is a testament to Judas’ belief in the “deity” of Jesus, that the enormity of his execution, and his “participation’ in it must have hit him like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to ask God’s forgiveness for killing his son, nor could he forgive himself, and his self-execution was the deserved punishment for his hand in the death of the Son of God.

As a child, I disturbed my father by crying in the theatre when the beast died in the movie, “The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms.” To me, the beast was an animal acting on instinct and didn’t mean to harm anyone. He was just confused by unfamiliar surroundings. I guess I just think too much. However, my defense of Judas is not, I believe, the result of over thinking, but of an attempt at understanding and compassion. How he must have felt for an action that he originally thought was the right one, but that betrayed the man he had loved and followed for three years, I can only guess at. If Judas truly believed that Jesus was who he claimed to be, he must surely have believed he was beyond forgiveness, beyond redemption, and that his role in Jesus’ death would make him a marked man for all time. And it did.

In yesterday’s post, I said that I was not religious in the conventional or organized sense. But I do believe that I am spiritual in my own way. For me, Judas is entitled to a little understanding, and forgiveness for what must have appeared to him as he put the rope around his neck, as the ultimate unforgivable betrayal. I am not sure how I could conceive living with that either.


Sonnet 17
Christopher Bogart

Why weren’t you what I wanted you to be –
A savior in the semblance of a king?
I wouldn’t have resorted to the tree
Had I’d but known ‘twas peace you meant to bring.
I didn’t understand your passive way
When action and defiance seemed be
The price that all of us would have to pay -
I didn’t know you came to rescue me.
Why couldn’t I pick the role I had to play?
Why had it been ordained long years ago
That it would be God’s son I must betray?
And if I’d known, would I have made it so?
If only I’d been told all this before
A length of knotted rope slammed shut the door.

It was a time...

Today is Good Friday. And while I am not a particularly religious man, at least in the conventional and organized sense, this day has always been a sacred day to me. For whether it was this exact day or not, almost 2,000 years ago, a young man, the son of a local carpenter, spent three years wandering the hills of Galilee preaching a message of love and forgiveness to a population that was being occupied by the most powerful army of its time. They were angry, and rightly so. The last thing they wanted to listen to was one of their own preaching forgiveness and love. Yet the message caught on, not in a big way, at first, but it caught on, none the less. And it spread. All over the world. A message of peace in a time of war. Imagine that. And, to make matters more incongruous, he claimed to be the son of God. And that we were all sons and daughters of God, and that we should start acting like it in our own behavior, and in our behavior to others.

We all know the rest of the story. It seemed that the only way he (and the loving God he represented) could convince us of that love was to sacrifice himself for us. He preached that "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13. And so he did. Once more, it seems he knew from his birth that this act of supreme sacrifice was his destiny, and he embraced it. Now we all know of the heroism of our own countrymen and women that have sacrificed their lives for our safety, and their sacrifice is both noble and loving. But to know, from your birth, that this sacrifice was your destiny, the only road you could take because that was why you were put on earth, and to live with that knowledge for 33 years, is to me amazing. I think that is why I always have connected Christmas and Easter together in my own mind. For Christmas to me is the birth of the promise of this love, and Easter is the proof of it.

And so, every Good Friday, I take the phone off the hook, keep the television and radio off, and work in silence from 12:00 noon until 3:00 PM, in memory of that sacrifice, and of the sacrifices of others who repeated this sacrifice with their own lives out of love for all of us. For me...

It Was A Time...
Christopher Bogart

It was the time that the world knew well..
A time of occupation.
Metal breastplates and course cloth,
Each searching for room and board
In the City of Bread.

On a hillside,
On a floor of straw,
An Infant lie,
His tiny head nudging the aged worn wood
Of a converted manger.

Angels hover round his bed of straw,
Course shepherds pipe their tunes,
Eastern kings leave gifts of gold
That glitter and spice
The ancient night
So many years ago.

Soon, all depart...

Then suddenly...
Two Strong and Gentle Hands
Cradle his Little Form,
Guiding him to the mouth of the cave.

There, –
At the very edge of the world,
He extends his tiny hands
Past the Cruciform Shadow
To reach
To touch and hold
The Star.

April Fools

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is a day celebrated in various countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, such as the UK, Australia, and South Africa the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool". Elsewhere, such as in France, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, The Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S., the jokes last all day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of January 1 as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.
In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392), the "Nun's Priest's Tale" is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two. Chaucer probably meant 32 days after March, i.e. May 2 the anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. However, readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean "March 32," i.e April 1. In Chaucer's tale, the vain cock Chauntecler is tricked by a fox.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am not a practical joker by nature. I guess I am just too afraid that, with my luck, if I did play a joke on someone, it would backfire. I had such an experience when I was in college, and the joke not only backfired, but hurt someone's feelings in the process. I never tried it again.

So my offering for April Fools Day is a sonnet that is, if anything, not a joke at all, but ironic. I guess that's just the teacher in me.

Sonnet 12
Christopher Bogart

True love does not depend on age or time.
True hearts will love when love is truly felt.
True poets do not obscure meaning with rhyme,
And winter snows in summer’s heat don’t melt.
Real beauty rarely wears a comely face,
But shines forth brightly from the soul within.
All of mankind is blind to state or race,
And glittering gold cannot compare with tin.
These truths are oft’ believed within the mind,
But it is not the mind from where love grows.
For many, lovers’ eyes are rarely blind
And so they learn the truth that Cyrano knows.
True love does not depend on human view.
Its life begins in blindness, born anew.