Whose ox is being gored?

Whose ox is being gored?
Christopher Bogart

“It all depends on whose ox is being gored.”
Ann used to say to me at work
when a petty disagreement
turned into the Tet Offensive and
the opposing sides scattered to seek new allies.
“Yes, I know how you feel.”
The voice would condescend.
“I really hate when that happens.”
From her tone you knew that
she didn’t have a horse in the race,
a dog in the fight,
or an ox in the pit.
And as both sides formed,
in opposing offices
Like an indoor version of “Capture the Flag,”
I looked in amazement at the energy expended
On proving the point. Being declared the winner.
Waving the flag over victorious heads
like a deranged tableau from “Les Mis.”
To some of the combatants,
it bore global importance;
To others, a minor irritation,
An imperceptible drop in the office temperature,
Or was it a rise?
And as all this played out before our eyes,
I looked back at Ann.
Her eyes glinted in mischievous innocence,
and a Mona Lisa smile formed on her lips,
reminding me silently that
I guess it really does depend on whose ox
is being gored.

One Catastrophic Stroke

One Catastrophic Stroke
Christopher Bogart

The house had a strange smell as I entered it for the first time
Since my mother’s catastrophic stroke.
That’s what the doctors called it. Catastrophic.
So serious, it seemed, when I first heard the word,
that it sounded to me like a ship lost at sea,
a town swallowed up in an earthquake,
a fire that left only blackened wood and white floating ash.

The house had a strange smell,
not like the smells of the family that once lived in it.
Not like the smells of roast beef, pan-fried potatoes and onion gravy.
Not like the smell of Borkum Riff pipe tobacco, or of laundry soap.
Just the strange smell of loss.

The family treasures, the legacy of a life lived together, now just so much clutter.
The detritus left of our lives together- a life now gone forever.
My father, long departed, sleeping peacefully at Holy Cross Cemetery.
My mother, in the Reformed Church Home, unable to move or speak.
My sister, sitting in the car, parked at the curb in front of the house.
And me, staring around at the clutter of a life lost to age,
To infirmity, to death.
Just clutter,
Stillness,
and catastrophic silence.

Deep Green Dreams

Deep Green Dreams
Christopher Bogart

There is a certain green,
a bright young shade
that newly budded leaves become
before deepening into a more mature
and darker hue.

There is almost a blueness in the fur
of every evergreen,
a blueness that seems
to seep through the sap
and permeate the air around it.

When streetlights shine through summer leaves,
they display a shade of gold,
like the light off an emerald, that
filters through to secure safety
on a darkened street.

There is profound somberness when
Nature mixes mood,
the blue from the sky
and the green of the leaves,
to create a color both ancient and secure.

This green coats the walls that
envelope me each night
in each tree, each lawn,
Each forest I have ever seen,
singing a silent lullaby
as I slip away,
deep in the seams of
deep green dreams.

The Beast

The Beast
Christopher Bogart

Children streamed in from all directions
and stand under the bulb-lit marquee,
waiting to see the Beast.

His father led him by the hand,
parting the juvenile multitudes
like Moses parting the waves,
into the cool darkness of the theatre.
With not a word spoken, his father bobbed and weaved,
Navigating kids running up and down the aisle
to find two seats in the middle of the squealing mob.

They sat in silence, amid youthful cacophony,
on this one day that would be etched
forever in the little boy’s memory,
the day his father had taken him out,
just he and he alone,
for his first father-son outing
to see a movie that was sure to inspire
terror in a little lad’s heart,
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

The theatre darkened slowly.
The crowd quieted down,
as the Beast rose from the waters of New York Harbor
on his prehistoric mission
to terrorize the citizens of the 1950’s.
To the leitmotif of childhood terror,
the Beast lumbered between the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan,
smashing cars and fleeing tourists
wherever he trod.

The mayhem continued,
scored by squeals and cries, until,
at the end of the movie,
it became apparent
that the Beast had to die.
The deed would be done at the Coney Island Amusement Park,
and; as the soldiers rode up to the top tracks of the roller coaster
and shoot the radioactive injection into the Beast’s throat,
the Beast flailed and cried out to the dark of the night,
crying to the heavens for a reason
for the crime.

As he bobbed and weaved
and finally fell, a cheer spontaneously rose
from the thrilled young crowd.
The father turned to his son,
with anticipation of similar jubilation,
to find only tears.

In the same silence
that hung over their arrival,
they walked home alone,
each with his own thought,
the father lost in curiosity at his son’s strange reaction,
and the boy in the surety that
this unique outing between father and son,
would never come again.

Summer Nights

Summer Nights
Christopher Bogart

It is difficult to describe in words
the feeling of peace that settles
into warm summer nights.

Sometimes there’s a silent stillness,
sometimes just a gentle breeze
bestirring leaves,
making them appear to quiver with excitement.

Bees abandon their flower bowers,
brown sparrows finish final pickings
in darkening grasses.
Dead leaves cast landscapes
In the impending shadows.

The events of the day
fade in importance
as the day’s disappointments
dissipate in the cool evening air.

We say goodbye to daylight’s care
as light leaves land
to the grander canopy
of twinkling stars.

One Man's Trash

One Man’s Trash
Christopher Bogart

What if luck was with you for just one day
when you stopped at your dream garage sale.

As you rummage around a mound of what appears to be junk,
what if you discover a miniature Van Gogh, just a little one,
buried deep in the heap on the asphalt below?

How about a more modest discovery,
a brass hurricane lamp, just the right kind,
for a place of pride in your dining room window?

Or a first edition of Dickens,
an Austen perhaps, or even a Shakespeare first folio
to add to your meager collection?

I always thought a sturdy oak desk,
like the ones that once graced a bank president’s office,
you know, one you could land a B42 on, would be a fine find.

Or a faded leather wing back chair with a more than fair sticker price.
That would be nice.

Or a marble bust of a famous writer, composer or minor Greek deity
would qualify as a real good buy.

Yeah. What if you happened upon the garage sale of your dreams,
Where ever item for sale was not as it seems,
instead of the kind that we always seem to find,
with no more than what we have come to expect:
a collection of mismatched cups,
a set of promotional drinking glasses,
and a stack of faded magazines, sure proof that
one man’s trash isn’t always another man’s treasure?

The Conscience of a King

The Conscience of a King
Christopher Bogart

There sometimes seems to be little difference between choice and fate.

The beat of our heart is not chosen.
Like a well-oiled machine, it chugs along
until, one day, it just ceases and desists.

But, is fate choice or just the preordained?

Do three ancient sisters really sit,
surrounded by flax and wool,
and finagle our future?
Does Clothos create the cord by spinning lifelines into being?
Does Lachesis weave these lifelines into whole fabric,
in a tapestry of life, of love, of loss and pain?
And, at the end, does Atropos finally cut that cord
And hurl us into dark oblivion?

If Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, just listened
to the predictions of the Sisters on the heath
and went on home,
kissed the Mrs. on the head,
and sat and ate
his daily bread, his haggis
and gulped his grog,
would the fog have cleared on the heath that night,
and what was meant to be,
Just be?
Would one day Macbeth be king anyway?

Who knows?

I guess I understand well
the consequence of choice, but
I must confess,
I haven’t the slightest idea
of the workings of fate or
what catches the conscience of a future king.

From the Marshes

From the Marshes
Christopher Bogart

My memories were born on salted breezes,
Blown across the marshes off Jamaica Bay.
From these American moors,
Whose swamps were populated, thick
With reeds and rushes,
I became conscious of a life
Distinctly my own.

They whispered wisdom to me, these reeds.
Their silken heads bowed low,
And their green bodies bent
To impart secrets that naked nature
Held in trust within their pliant forms.

As generations died
From age and future fire,
Decay made fertilizer
To grow my stalking tutors
To search,
To speak
In an endless conversation
With the sky,
With the stars,
And with me.

These bowing bars of seeming brittle vegetation
Were remarkably pliant,
Reliant only on each others’
Counsel.

It seemed to me as if they knew
Everything there was to know,
For me to grow,
For I was young
And knew nothing.

So I spent my days among them,
Sitting on the soft soil,
Watching and listening, as
Their silken heads nodded from side to side,
They confided what they knew.

And I learned.

Sonnet 2

Sonnet 2
Christopher Bogart

When I was young, and love was but a game
To play with careless rules at random sites,
I did not play by rules that were the same
As those that others chose. I chose new rites.
I looked not for the brief transparent hold.
I looked not for the warm but fleeting touch.
I mined them not for silver, but for gold.
For love I had to offer, I valued much.
And so I searched in truth throughout the days,
And weeks, and months, and years of struggle and strife.
I paid the coin all lovers learn to pay.
I paid the coin of my own youth, my life.
For what I learned is love is never sure,
Unless it’s found first where it’s most secure.

Under the Greenwood Tree

Under the Greenwood Tree
Christopher Bogart

It sometimes seems we live our lives
Under the greenwood tree.

We see the seasons change
Entangled in its branches.
Its leaves form a canopy
That changes from the bright green of new life,
Through the deepened hue of summer eves,
To the reflected golden of each setting sun.

We lie in the dapple of its dawn,
We work and toil from early morn,
We buy and sell,
We sweat and fret as midday sun
Streams through its boughs.
We hold each new victory,
Each defeat,
Each and every life we meet,
Each love, each birth,
And, at each somber loss, we croon
To an indifferent moon.

And when each sun escapes at end of day,
We lie in the protection if its spreading arms,
And sleep in the shadows of each new night.
We dream of silent mysteries,
And wonder at the miracle
Of each new dawn.

Sonnet 19

Sonnet 19
Christopher Bogart

Brisk breezes float him toward a pristine shore
Where true intentions bob beyond the foam.
His hopes too float on swells he’s rode before.
So many times, so many journeys home.
And, in those journeys, what’s been lost and found
Of life that shows increased upon his brow?
He strolls knee deep in issues as profound
As those of sober childhood, long - gone now.
Gone, an adolescence, tanned and strong,
Gone to intellect and tame pursuits.
Through youth deferred come strains of sorrow’s song
As time through crumbling passages still shoots.
Will he hold hopes above his sorrows borne
Until new hope illuminates new morns?

If Insects Wore Footwear

About a year ago, the government released a report on types of "torture" that had been used in the last administration. This poem is a reaction to the more "humorous" aspects of that report.

If Insects Wore Footwear
Christopher Bogart

Recently, swarms of memos,
Tales of the torture of terrorists,
Came flying from the headquarters
Of the CIA.

There was “grasping”, and “walling’,
And “firm facial holding”
“face slapping”, “cramped confinement”
the ever-popular “water boarding”
“sleep deprivation” and “insects in a box”…

Insects in a box!

Now I know that the CIA
Has been bugging for years,
But insects?
As torture?

Whatever happened to the rack,
And then the ruin,
The iron maiden,
The thumb screw? Who knew
That good old drawing and quartering
Would be replaced by bee keeping?

Drones?

Hey, Fly Boy!

Be careful! I’m packing a dung beetle!
And it’s loaded!!


And what about “boots on the ground?”
I could put 5000 boots on the ground
With just 50 centipedes.

That is…
If insects actually wore footwear.

a step into tomorrow

Tonight, as I returned my black academic robe after the graduation ceremony, posed for a ton of pictures with different students, parents and teachers like a loved celebrity, and walked to the parking lot, my full-time career as a teacher was at an end. Over these last few weeks, that career has been recognized by, as older writers would say, "all and sundry." It has been a truly heartening ending. And yet, I was looking for more. I was searching for closure.

We spend all of our adult life in a profession; and, one day, that profession comes to an end, not involuntarily, but quite voluntarily. We make the decision, not because we can't continue, but because we know that our time in front of the classroom needs be over. Not because we can no longer perform, but because we no longer choose to perform. Not because we don't love this profession that has occupied our entire adult life, but because we love it too much to stay longer than is our due. It is now the time to find out who we are, beyond our professional life as a teacher.

Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ and Socrates, when asked what title they wished to be addressed by, responded simply “Teacher.” Being a teacher is, to my mind, the greatest of professions. That you can read this post and understand it is due in no small measure to someone who taught you to read and to understand.

This night was bittersweet for me. I had no desire to say goodbye, but needed to say goodbye to find closure and end one part of my life, so my new life could flourish. Like Moses and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man I had the honor of meeting when he came to speak at my college a few months before he was assassinated, I stand tonight on the mountain top. I look back at the landscape of a past life of forty-two years, and forward toward the green hills and pastures of a new one. The features of this new landscape are not yet distinct, but lie before me, none the less.

Tonight I take a step into tomorrow.

Thank You, Lisa

As I prepare to retire tomorrow night after graduation, I am reminded of a dear friend that has retired last year. While others have certainly been supportive in this endeavor, one friend of mine stands out of this crowd. She seems to have known how "difficult" this experience would be. And she seemed determined to stand by me through it, to make the experience easier, to make it that much more special.

Tonight, I am posting a tribute I delivered to the end of her career last year at her retirement dinner. She was, and still is, a great teacher. And a great friend. Thank you, Lisa.

Tribute: Lisa McLean

As I was thinking of what to say tonight about Lisa McLean, how I would, in two minutes, sum up her career in education, a career that stretched over 38 years, 34 of them in Long Branch, a poem I had read over 40 years ago continued to pop into my mind. This poem had nothing to do with teaching. Nothing even to do with education. It was a poem written by Sam Walter Foss about an experience he had had one hot fall day when, on a particularly long walk, he came upon a bench under a big tree and flanked by a well. The sign on the well said Come and drink if you are thirsty. The sign on the bench said Come and sit awhile if you are tired. And the sign on a barrel of apples at the foot of the tree said Help yourself. Why would that poem pop into my mind when I was trying to write a tribute to Lisa McLean, the teacher?

In her 38 years as a teacher, Lisa has certainly proven herself to have been a master teacher. She has taught at all levels in the district, from Pre-School Handicapped to 12th grade high school classes in 5 of the 8 district schools. Twice she was named High School Teacher of the Year. She spent her career teaching children with the severest handicaps. Children of, some would say, limited abilities. And yet, Lisa worked wonders with them, making miracles in the classroom each and every day. And how did she do it? How did she teach high school children with severe learning disabilities to read not just one Charles Dickens novel in a year, but 8 of them, and a few by other authors to boot? “Where are we this week?” I would ask one of her students as I passed him in the hallway. “We’re in England.” He would reply. Or, when she was reading A Tale of Two Cities, “We’re in France.” It didn’t take me long to realize that her technique was two-pronged yet simple. She loved them. And, because she loved them, she refused to allow them to be limited by their own limitations.

If what I have just described was all that Lisa McLean did over the last 36 years, she would surely qualify as a master teacher. But that is not all she did. Not by a long shot. She will be remembered for far more than that in the minds and hearts of the children of Long Branch families. She will be remembered by students who could not afford to go to their proms, but suddenly found money for tuxedos or fancy dresses, and made memories they would have for the rest of their lives. She will be remembered for birthday celebrations, replete with cake, candles and presents by those who had no one else to remember when they were born. She will be remembered by senior homerooms for regularly scheduled homemade breakfasts of French toast, bacon, juice and coffee, made to encourage them to get to school on time, for sugar cookies and bottled water in a study hall they once dreaded to go to, for a friendly and concerned ear for their troubles or advice and encouragement for their morale, whenever they needed it. She will be remembered for bags of groceries delivered to those who could barely support their families, as well as for the bags laden with breakfast bars, goldfish and juice she would cart into school each and every day for children who did not have the time, or the money, to grab a meal. “Could I have one of those, Miss?” she would hear each day from a student standing at her classroom door, a student she might never have met before. Her reply was always simple, and always bore the same warmth and care, “Absolutely!” Not once or twice, but day after day, year after year, in a lifetime of generosity and love.

Dealing with the loss of a husband and a mother in less than three years, she reached out beyond her own grief to help a dying teacher hold her family together by cooking meals, fundraising, and daily hands-on intervention that those of us who know her, have come to expect. Ask her why she does these things, and you will get a look from her that will make you sorry you asked. Questions like that are rhetorical, at best, to Lisa McLean.

So now, when I think back to that tree, that bench, that well and that barrel of apples, and to that poet who went home that day and wrote a poem, entitled The House by the Side of the Road, I think I understand why it popped into my mind. It is the last stanza of this poem that, I believe, explains it best. He wrote:

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by –
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish – so am I;
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

For the last 36 years, Lisa McLean has lived in that house by the side of the road, and has been a friend to everyone. And it has been my distinct honor to have been one of them.

Garden Apartments

Garden Apartments
Christopher Bogart

I’d always wondered why the called them
“garden apartments” There never seemed to be

A garden. No flowers. No vegetables. Just grass,
And a few bushes, surrounded by a fence of thick iron chain.

Sometimes there was a tree, double collared, and held to parallel posts,
Like some wild animal, restrained to avoid escape.

But those trees couldn’t escape. They were skinny and frail,
With barely any leaves. And no mind of their own.

I stared at them every day from the metal-encased window of my brand-new bedroom,
Deep within Pomonok Houses, a public housing project in Flushing, Queens.

Like chambers in a termite mound, each apartment was
Bound on all sides by apartments, each inhibited

By strangers with no faces, no names,
All trapped in metal, and glass and red brick

Lost in a maze of courtyards and streets,
In garden apartments with no gardens.


And I, like a sapling, contained within the bounds of iron chains,
Double collared to the marriage of my parents,

Bound to parallel posts, and secured to their red brick by the
Parallel walls. I, skinny and frail

With barely any leaves, and no mind
Of my own, grew where city streets contained

This garden of no named strangers whose brick-faced
Silence, like walls, rose up to block the sun.

Retire/Redundant

Retire: to withdraw from one's position or occupation: conclude one's working or professional career. (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary)

Redundant: Chiefly British. The state or fact of being unemployed because work is no longer offered or considered necessary.(Answers.com)

Redundant
Christopher Bogart

We call it retirement.
The British call it redundancy,
And I can see why.
With three days left
In what almost seems
An endless career,
I sit here, looking at the screen
Of my computer.
I’ve become unseen,
Emptying my hard drive.
It seems to me
I had barely arrived –
A brief twenty-five years ago
When, lo, to my surprise
It’s almost over –
And I sit here.
I have become
What I most feared –
What the British call
Redundant.

Summer’s Days

Summer’s Days
Christopher Bogart

Wisps of light
Invade
Dying night.
Pale pink
Becomes
Faint yellow
Spreading heat and light –
Blanketing bright
In sultry air
Enveloping,
Suffusing,
Suffocating care,
Scenes in sound,
A low buzzing noise
Cutting through
The moist morning air,
Quiet fair,
Then increasing to soar -
Buzzing roar.
Turns to rattle,
As the rattling of a long thin chain,
Drawn again
Across the slippery surface
Of lush green leaves,
Yellow haze,
In the lazy life
Of bright summer days.

One Door Closes …

I ran across this picture in the last few days. It's a pleasant picture. It’s a pleasant doorway. It seems to be a door that would lead someone from one pleasant place to another pleasant place. One garden to another garden. One world to another world. And it seems to do it rather gracefully.

I feel like I am in that doorway now. And the room behind me, I am satisfied, was a beautiful room full of rich objects that pleased the heart and enriched the soul. At the Retirement Dinner last Thursday night where my biography was published in a booklet along with the biographies of 22 others and a person of my choice reviewed my forty-two year career, I felt myself moving out of one space and into the doorway. After months, after years, of anticipation of this day, I can finally see out that doorway and into the next space in my life. I cannot see it in minute detail, but it seems a pleasant place; one that, with a little work, a few select plantings and some refurbishing, could be a very pleasant space indeed.

At this point in my life, I have come to believe that there are three stages to this move, very much like the three stages of moving from one space to another. The first stage is experiencing the first space to the fullest, staying as long as you want, and as long as you are improving, the space. But you know, in your heart of hearts, when it is time to move to the doorway.

Standing in the doorway is the second step. That step allows you to still feel the comfort of the space you once occupied while getting a better view of the space you are moving toward. That step is a difficult, yet necessary, step. Once you are in the doorway, the open expanse of the new space comes into view. You have not entered it, yet you see all of its enticements, and all of its possibilities. And you want to take the third step.

This week is the last one of a forty-two year career. I stand in the doorway. A few nights ago, I posted memories of the beginning of that career. In future nights, I might share more. As far as what my plans are for the space ahead of me, I really don’t know. I will have to evaluate its potential, explore its limits and just spend some time there. But I know one thing for sure. I want to take the step.

The Lady with Sad Eyes

The Lady with Sad Eyes
Christopher Bogart

From the first moment I saw her,
As a very young child,
She was to me
The Lady with Sad Eyes.

Why were they sad, I wondered?

She was dressed all in black,
Save for one white gardenia
Pinned to the black cloth
That covered her breast.

She held in her hands
A bouquet of white flowers,
Save for one black carnation.
But what of that?

Was she going to a wedding?
A funeral?

I often pondered that mystery,
Only later to learn
That it was both.

Tied, in her teens, to a child
Made a necessity of marriage,
And a misery of life,

She died not long after.

While I could easily avoid her gaze,
What I could not avoid
Was that same sense of sadness
That shone
In my mother’s blue eyes.

Once it's gone ...

When I wrote this poem, the quick passage of time on vacation was a real problem, and very disturbing. Now, a week from retirement, it seems that my time left as an employed teacher is the paste I can't get back in the tube.

Once it’s gone…
Christopher Bogart

Vacation days are so very different
from the other days of the year.

They go so fast,
and no matter how you try to drag them out,
they seem to fly by anyway.

Kind of like trying to slide the toothpaste
back into the tube.

Or like those cans that explode with cloth-covered springs.

No matter how hard you push them back in the can,
there just never seems to be the room
for all of those springs.
You try to wedge them in,
stuffing your fingers into the can
to keep them from springing out,
you just can’t seem to…

I’m just saying.

Once the day has past,
you just can’t seem to get it back again.

Once it’s gone,
it’s gone.

Retirement Dinner

Sonnet 4
Christopher Bogart

One fine September day, long years ago,
I walked into a classroom, stark and bare,
With doubts and hopes I’d hoped would never show,
To set my foot on roads few travelers dared.
Would they like Shakespeare’s plays? Their will be Donne?
Would Beowulf’s adventures set them free?
Would Swift, and Pope, and Johnson make them run?
Would they like poetry? Would they like me?
Long years have passed since that September day
When first I set my foot upon that path
That led so many minds to dare to stray
From temporary dreams to those that last.
I dared to try to reach beyond the bars
And gently guide their hands to touch the stars.

Storm Story

Storm Story
Christopher Bogart

Winds howl around the wooden walls,
Rattling the fragile Quonset hut.
Gusts, like ghouls and goblins,
Swirl around the ground,
Slamming at windows,
Ripping at roofs,
Their slender fingers peeling the shingles,
And tossing them,
Haphazardly,
Around the ground below.

Row upon row of huts,
Lie deserted
In random ruin.

We
Alone
Amidst rows and rows
That made our neighborhood,
Alone among the marshes of Jamaica Bay,
As water rises,
Wind howls in pain, and

I

Tremble
In my tiny wooden seat,
The pegboard,
With its multicolored wooden pegs,
Scatter in the darkness
Around my feet,
Too afraid
To disturb
The delicate equilibrium
Of wind, rain and
Anger
Swirling around us,
Trying to get in.

Ikon

Ikon
Christopher Bogart

In the turbulence of early morning,
The golden-gilded domes arise,
Ornament, profuse and intricate
Arabesque to onion point
Pinning faith into the sky.

Incense- clouded
Swirling, tumbling
Whispering, whirling,
Spiraling upward
Cascading downward
Until they reach the vortex
Splashing into tiny drops
Lightly drifting,
Lotus- blossom
Toward a future time.

Driven now,
Muddy canyons cut soiled snow.
Rutted by the tracks of tired sleds,
Their sledges plodding toward Yekaterinburg
There to see the last home,
The last refuge,
The last humbling of a czar.

Time now in a vortex:
Morals, customs, past and future,
Ideas, machines, and time arise;
And leave, in their path,
The ruins of their pride:
The house that can be no longer called home,
A house of special purpose.

And, like the droplets in the vortex,
Exiles flee the frozen land.
Blood in rivulets run
Toward the borders.
Horsed, robed soldiers rear
To guard the flanks,
Packages spill,
And are left in the slush wake.

Inland tides ebb and flow –
All mazurkas with changing partners,
Okrana and Cheka keep the time
With political tides
And a hail of shell,
Hot metal falls on frozen snow.

In a mine shaft
Lies a buckle
Made of brass
Embossed in black.
On its face,
A two-headed eagle,
So the present kills the past.

I never left my heart in San Francisco

I never left my heart in San Francisco
Christopher Bogart

I never left my heart in San Francisco.
I’ve never ever been there before.

I’ve left my heart in other places…

In Canarsie, Brooklyn,
the place I was born,
In Queens, in garden apartments
where I grew up,
In Metuchen, in the pine alley,
where the wild winds moaned,
And in Spotswood, the first home
we ever owned,
but which, last summer,
I emptied and sold.

I left bits of my heart in all of those places,
but pieces of my heart still reside,
in each and every place I loved,
I, there, still abide.

Yet what’s left of my life
now lies out before me,
in traces,
in spaces,
in places
I have never been before;
but, now that I’m retired,
I plan to explore.

Memories of St. Mary's High

As I approach the last two weeks of my teaching career, I am looking back over the forty-one years of teaching; and, in particular, to the first days of that career. The memories I have of St. Mary’s High School in Perth Amboy are very special to me. They were my first. They were, in many ways, my happiest teaching memories.

In September of 1968, I was 22 years old and had just graduated from St. Peter’s College that spring. Four days after the school year had begun, a young teacher had decided that the job was not for him, and I was hired to teach Freshman World History and Senior English at St. Mary’s High School the first week of school by dribbling a basketball between my legs in the principal’s office. “We need young men as role models for our boys.” Sister Joachim had said. That Friday afternoon, I walked into the first classroom on the right on the second floor of St. Mary’s. It had high ceilings, and high windows that had to be opened and closed with a pole. The cloakroom was in the back, behind forty-eight wooden desks. A massive oak teacher’s desk was centered in the front of the room. I walked over to the windows and looked out. Ahead of me stretched the rooftops of Perth Amboy, and the Outer Bridge that connected New Jersey to Staten Island. It was my first high school classroom. The kids were spirited but great. I was happy. Over the next two years, I put my heart and my soul into my teaching, taking on the worst class that the school had seen in a long time, planning activities that would give them pride in themselves. Two years later, all but two graduated. I spent long hours in the school, teaching, counseling, coaching freshmen basketball, directing school plays and attending every dance and prom the school had for three years. Because of the long drive home, I stayed in school on the nights of the dances and worked on my schoolwork. Local parents, when they found out that I was in the building, sent their sons over to invite me to dinner. I felt that that would be inappropriate, so I politely declined. Soon, they would send their younger children over with dinner in covered dishes, so I wouldn't starve until the dance began. Even when I went out on dates on Saturday nights, I would find myself at the Reo Diner in Woodbridge, with my date and a number of high school students, some of them drunk, counseling them and offering them my concern. Soon it became known, and the kids would get there ahead of me, just to talk. My girlfriend insisted I see the movie, “To Sir with Love.” I don’t know why. I was living it. And when I got up every morning, I couldn’t wait to get to school.

During my first year as a teacher, at one of the priest’s twentieth anniversary party, a mother introduced me to her fifth grade son. After speaking to her for a few minutes, I tousled the boy’s blond hair and told him that I’d see him in a few years. As I walked away from them, I overheard his mother tell him “You’ve been touched by a teacher. You’ll be smart.”

However, my happiness was to last for only two years. In the third year, I led a lay teachers’ strike against a new principal who changed the working conditions and salaries in an effort to force most of the lay teachers out of the school. The strike lasted two weeks. On Monday of the second week, the students were bused to school, but refused to enter the building. The following day they arrived again, but this time with picket’s signs that their parents helped them make. Every day they came, and picketed the school. On Friday night of that week, three students were driving to a friend’s house to make more picket signs when they were involved in an accident. After first aid was provided, all three went home. The following Monday, the teachers came back to school, ending the strike, having gained nothing. It was the first lay teachers’ strike in the Diocese of Trenton, and it cost all of us our jobs.

On graduation day, I watched the class I had spent the last two years trying to save, graduate. One particularly small boy that I had gotten involved in track a few years ago smiled at me as he passed me, going down the aisle to graduate. He would become, in later years, Congressman Christopher Smith from the Fourth District of New Jersey. When I led them back to the classroom to change out of their caps and gowns, there was a large sheet cake on my desk wishing me well in the future, and a plaque from the class. Later that day, the underclassmen had a party for all the teachers at the VFW Hall to say goodbye to us. A tough hard-edged kid I had tried to work with, stood in the corner, tears streaming down his eyes.

The following day, I went back to the school to clean my desk out. As I walked around the corner of the school, Duke Herron and Eddie Gandy were sitting on the stairs at the entrance to the school to help me pack up. Later,I took a picture of them sitting on the window, holding the name plate from the Blue and White Room door, the city of Perth Amboy in the background. Two hours later, I thanked them, said goodbye, and drove out of the school parking lot for the last time. My heart felt like it was broken. But it would heal. It had too. I had to find another job. Ten years later, St. Mary's High School closed its doors as a high school.

When I look back now at those three years at St. Mary’s High School in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, I have come to realize that they were some of the happiest years of my life. I had a lot in common with the students who sat in front of me that day. I was only four years older than they; and, like them, still had long dark hair. With Jimmy Durek, Vinny Cuiffo, Joanne De Amicis, Larry McGrath, Bob Tarr, Micky McCann, James Shafranski, Mary Ann Bauer and over 150 others (some of my classes had as many as 48 students), I began a journey that would last over the next 42 years of my life and that draws to a close in two weeks. I can see their faces before my eyes as clearly as I can see the faces of the students I taught last Friday in my AP English 12 classes. The only difference is that my AP English students are 18 years old and the students in my first class are now 60. In my eyes, though, they are still 18 and probably always will be.

Missed Chances

I've been thinking about my father a lot over the last few months. He died over eleven years ago of Parkinson's Disease at the age of 88. When I was younger, I was convinced that he, a man of a few words, had nothing to teach me, a man of so very many. Yet, at so many times in my life over the years since his departure, I am reminded of his words, and surprisingly, his wisdom. It was a quiet wisdom, but rich with lessons he had learned in life, lessons it seemed it has taken me a long time to learn. I welcome his voice now, and regret not having listened all those years ago.

Missed Chances
Christopher Bogart

I stepped into the ICU,
Pulled the sea green curtain back
And saw a slender form under stark white sheets,
Shrunken,
Still,
Yet breathing steadily.

“Dad” I said softly.

He opened his eyes and looked at me
Without surprise.

“It’s been a long time.” He said,
So matter-of-factly.

It was the truth.
It had been a long time,
Years …

As I stood there,
Staring at him,
I searched for why,
But could not find the answer.

His eyes just rested softly on me,
His lids drooping
Ever so slowly.

“Sleep.” I said softly.
“No.” he replied. “You’ll go away again.”
“No. I won’t. I’ll sit right here until you wake.”

He closed his eyes slowly and slept,
Deeply,
Profoundly.

Later that night, I left
While he still slept
So soft within his dreams.

It seemed that I had missed my chance.

For when I saw him next,
He could no longer speak.
Just stare.

But his voice was in his eyes.

It is that voice that comes to me
Still,
Day after day,
From out of the darkness
Of my own soft dreams.

In the Air...

About 35 years ago, I took 28 students to Greece for the Easter vacation. It was a very eventful trip. We went to the Acropolis in Athens, Delphi, Corinth, Mycenae, Cape Sounion and the island of Hydra. And one of my students ruptured his appendix and had to have emergency surgery. We were lucky to bring him home alive. I never forgot that "vacation."

On the long 12 hour plane ride return to the US on April 7, 1974, I walked up and down the aisle. My students slept peacefully as we flew home, and was struck by how durable yet dependent these children were.

Today, I was reminded of that moment as I watched a group of my students try to explain to me how they felt about an important issue. I was reminded of how fragile, yet how valuable, they were. And what an awesome responsibility taking care of them can be.

And I was reminded of this poem that I wrote on the plane all those years ago.

In the Air,
29,000 Feet over Europe
Christopher Bogart

See how they sleep
With heavy eyelids, shadowed downy cheeks,
So silent and serene.

And when I think
Of how they hold their capabilities
For war and for peace…

I am amazed
That God creates so complex and so mystical
A creature in a child
That I wonder…

If the gleam and the glitter in their eyes,
The smile that seems to warm the Earth,
The tears that rent the heart
From its ordained repose,
And the quiet love that rests so deep within…

Is not divine.

Dr. Radcliffe’s Camera

Dr. Radcliffe’s Camera
Christopher Bogart

Circular sentinel,
Pride of the Oxford dons,
Surrounded by spears of medieval gray –
Stone spires whose Gothic prisms
Counterpoint its broad round shape.

Smiling cylinder
Of beaming honey stone,
Ornamented by memories of
Greek and Roman pasts and
Sentinel now
Of my solitude,
Protecting my peace.

Looming giant,
Whose massive shape
Invades the sky, deep blue,
Rounding up great clouds
To circle ‘round
In a dizzying parade.

A wonder to the thousands
Who come and see…
Of my pain in leaving you,
And of visions of a life to come,
What can you see
For me?

The Persistence of Memory

The Persistence of Memory
Christopher Bogart

Do you remember that painting
By Salvatore Dali,
“The Persistence of Memory”?

Did you ever have one of those days?

You know the type,
When everyone wants you to fix
Everything,
Where nothing stays
Where you left it,
Nothing is finished
And everything you touch
Turns to a soft brown mound?

Your mind darts
To parts of reality
Arrayed in a line drawing
Before you.

Do you stand by the clock?
Why not?
It’s melting
On the tree,
On the wall,
Onto the plain,
And so are you.

Tempus fugit.

Do you stand
In the rain, no matter
If it’s Spain?

Your life has hit the rocks,
But what of it?

Do you want to run to the
Vanishing point
And vanish?

What’s the point?

Or do you just descent
To all fours,
And claw your way
Around the foreground,
Until you can remember where
The life you lost
Can again be found?

The Nexus

The Nexus
Christopher Bogart

At the nexus of syllable and sound,
Where music meets language,
Words soar,
Spiral,
Twist,
Topple,
Roar.

Clear their rare air
To hear their joy,
Their pain,
Their mental rain
Again,
And again.

They scream,
They plead.
Their anguish strokes the strings
Of violins.
Tremolos reverberate across bows
Of blood red cellos,
Or stabbed with fingers, calloused,
On the tin runes of mandolins,
Guitars.

Sweet sound strains far
Along the sharpened curves
Of the scimitar
So very far away,
So very near
To ears,
To minds,
To souls,
Until, at last,
We fear,
We dare to hear,
To loose
Control.