Picnic

Picnic
Christopher Bogart

At the end of a hospital visit with my aunt,
I walked down the long blue corridor toward the elevators
and slowly gaining ground on an orderly dressed all in blue,
the fingers of his right hand were rapped firmly around
the rattan handles of a wicker picnic basket.

I must admit to a little curiosity,
if not a little amusement
at the incongruity of a picnic basket,
lined with a red and white checkered table cloth,
in the hands of a hospital orderly.

We turned together to face the elevator door.
I was heading to my car to bring my aunt home,
he, I mused, to a plot of green grass under a small tree,
maybe across from the hospital parking lot; and,
in that semi-secluded spot, to enjoy a quiet lunch,
away from illness and grim realities of a hectic hospital day.

The doors rolled opened slowly.
He gestured for me to enter first,
then he turned and faced the door.
“What floor?” he asked as he pushed the button labeled B.
“Ground Floor, please.” I responded.
He nodded and pressed G.

I sighed as I thought of my aunt’s recent illness,
and how happy I was to be taking her home.

The elevator lurched into action, and downward.
He stared, solemnly, at the metallic doors.
To break the tension, I opined
“You must be looking forward to lunch.”
Then asked, “Going on a picnic?”
He turned his head, ever so slightly toward me
and smiled ever so politely,
if a little pointed,
then looked down at the basket in his hand.
“Oh. You mean this.” He sighed with a heavy heart.

Hardly an attitude to take at the prospect of a picnic.

“No.” he said. “This isn’t what you think.”
Well, I wondered, what else could it be?
“This,” and he gestured to the basket, “is so not to alarm the visitors.
I am transporting this infant to the morgue in the basement.”

In the brief silence that ensued, mercifully,
the bell rung and the doors of the elevator opened.
“Ground floor.” He stated plainly,
and to my eternal relief,
he stepped aside to let me pass.

I did not look back, as the doors closed behind me,
And the elevator made its solemn way to the basement below.
I had to get my car.
My aunt was being released from the hospital today.

The Madonnas of the Plastic Bags

The Madonnas of the Plastic Bags
Christopher Bogart

their barreled bodies poured into
stretch slacks of pink and black,
their backs hunched in repeated stoopings,
they climb out the back of a black pickup truck,
silently as to not disturb the clientele
sipping frapaccino on the curb.

Their thick brown fingers clutch empty black bags,
their plastic shining dull images of pain,
left to wane in the fading light.

They reach their aching arms up to the air
as would a chubby child
gesticulating the fate how high
to pull full bags, bags
stuffed to overflow with the detritus of the upper middle class day,
of circulars and shopping bags from high-end stores,
of plastic water bottles and cardboard cups
escheoned with the green Starbuck’s logo,
of crumpled paper napkins and transparent straws.

They lift the bags high, the elevation of the host of refuse
now slid out from their circular wrought iron containers,
now carried carefully to the truck,
now slung over the gate and into the back of its flat bed,
destined to be dumped, emptied at a date and time
unknown to all but the continued monotony of the act,
repeated in a laborious litany of container after container,
store after high-end store,
again and again and again.

And when their day is finally done,
these middle aged madonnas crawl
into their flat bed
and pray
for rain tomorrow.

A Writing Group Is Born

At least, I hope it is. We are starting a poetry writing group in the Monmouth County, New Jersey area. The purpose of this group would be to provide information, feedback and support to interested working poets from the Monmouth County area.

A few poets have already signed on to the group that will begin meeting in Eatontown in January of 2011, and meet at least once a month from then on.

As with anything new, while it will have a few set goals, it will also be a work in progress, with the flexibility to respond to the ever-changing needs of the group.

I know that this is an unusual use of this blog to announce the formation of a new writing group, I am taking advantage of the generosity of the website New Jersey Poets and Poetry (http://njpoetspoetry.blogspot.com/) who posts my blog in their Blog Roll, to circulate the information about the formation of this new group.

Anyone wishing to participate in this new enterprise can contact me at cabogart@aol.com, and I will answer any questions they might have, provide them the particulars, as well as the where and the when of the first meeting, and any subsequent meetings.

My Country is an Autumn Place

My Country is an Autumn Place
Christopher Bogart

Since I was a child,
and looked up at classroom walls
to pictures of pilgrims
dressed all in black, with white linen ruffs
walking through forests of new fallen leaves,
stalking wild turkey to complete the harvest feast,
my country became an autumn place,
a country of crimson and gold.

But I’ve never lived in the land of the pilgrims.
I live by the millstone that sits by the river
in Thomas Eaton’s town,
where yellow, rust and maroon mums
line single file across front lawns,
where cornstalks of faded parchment
are tied to lit lampposts, and where
carved pumpkins populate porches
of home after home.

I live in the land where the sharp scent of apple
mix with the earthy smell of damp leaves
raked into piles that line the curb.

I live in a land of autumn.

At that time of the year
in early November,
the promise of pilgrims
is dutifully fulfilled
by walking down Grant Street to Memorial School
on a brisk autumn night.

Just as the sun sets over red sugar maples,
extinguishing the flame of their falling leaves,
friends and neighbors are drawn in from all directions,
to do their civic duty, and
to affirm their equality with their fellow pilgrims
all throughout the land.

Their quiet yet friendly banter centers around
the possibility of frost on those porch pumpkins,
on the last cut of grass,
and their preparations for Thanksgiving
both as holiday and as holy day.

As I leave that school at dusk
To make my way back home,
Walking the sidewalks
from Grant to Clinton,
I realize how much
my country is an autumn place,
a small town, an Eatontown,
whose roads are lined
with piles of fallen leaves.

And as I turn ‘round the corner
to the street where I live,
I look up ahead of me,
straining in the dying light to see
the lamplight through the porch window and
the warming glow of home.

Halloween

Halloween, or the evening before All Hallows, has been a tradition in western culture that goes all the way back to the Celts almost 2,000 years ago even though the name was not used until about the 16th Century. It was believed that the evening before All Saints Day (All Hallows) on November 1st, the spirits of the deceased, both good and bad, were allowed out for one “merry romp” in the real world before sunrise on November 1st. Probably one of the most inventive depictions of this yearly event is the animated segment, “Night on Bald Mountain,” from Walt Disney’s 1940 movie, Fantasia.

Souling, or the carving and lighting of a hollowed out turnip in commemoration of deceased loved ones, is maintained in the tradition of carving out pumpkins, far more plentiful in the New World. (Thank God! Could you imagine hollowing out a turnip today? Especially with all that wax!)

Family members wanting to attract the souls of their loved ones, while frightening away the evil spirits that were also on the loose, would dress in costume and hang out in front of homes, collecting food from passersby for their efforts. Bonfires lit in the night, once used for the offering of animal bones to satisfy these spirits, lent their colors of orange and black to the holiday. I guess the inclusion of witches, werewolves, black cats, ghosts, goblins, vampires and all manner of bats, were added later.

I looked over poetry about the celebration of Halloween and was not particularly inspired. It seems that holidays just don’t inspire poetry beyond the banal and predictable. Maybe it’s the orthodoxy of our own traditions that cause us to look at holidays in this way. Particularly this holiday. For our own fears are rarely inhabited by stereotypic characters of witches, werewolves, black cats, ghosts, goblins and vampires. Our own fears are usually far more terrifying. And if there are ghosts, they are the ghosts of lost love, of people we have known and loved. Or hated now with guilt. And our vampires suck our blood more metaphorically through our bank accounts than Count Vlad the Impaler ever did. Or maybe it’s because the type of Halloween demons we envision on this holiday are more fun to be scared of, like a ride in an amusement park, when they are not rooted in our deepest of fears. Who knows?

Halloween has become more the social ritual of custom than the religious belief rooted in life and death, good and evil, innocence and guilt. If it still were, what fun would that be?

Lamp Glow

Lamp Glow
Christopher Bogart

Cold crisp air frosts the autumn night.
The amber moon plays hide and seek
Bare trees –
Bearing limbs –
Leaves rustling in the night air.
Persistent breezes
Inundate –
Articulate –
Then vanish
As quickly as they arrive.

Old homes,
Sentries of the silent streets,
Silent pasts,
Rest in the shadows of present darkness.
Glowing lamps
In bow windows
Shed warm light:
A welcome
To the night traveler,
Tempting him to stay,
To delay
The journey he needs to make,
The destination he can’t forsake.

Dry leaves skitter-scatter
Before his feet.
Beat.
Retreat.
Tumbling ahead of gusts,
To scurry to the curbs below.

Lead onward then,
With lungs full of cold, dry air.
Hair tingling,
Mingling
With the feeling
Of frosty evenings –
Precursor of the long cold winter
Yet to come.

Sonnet 3

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
Richard Lovelace, “To Althea, from Prison” (1618 – 1657)


Sir Richard Lovelace wrote this about his understanding of the concept of freedom when he was incarcerated not once but twice for championing unpopular causes. I have begun this post with this quote because I too have come to understand that concept of freedom in ostensibly confining circumstances. However, the confines I wish to speak of do not have to do with mortar and brick, but of poetic convention.

The Shakespearian sonnet, like the other two sonnets of its time, the Petrarchan and the Spenserian, are bound by certain literary constraints. While they are all fourteen lines long, with the last two lines ending in a couplet, the Shakespearian sonnet has a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg. The first four lines of this sonnet introduce the theme, the second four expand it, the third four, called the turn, refocus it, and the last two leave the reader with the message. Sounds pretty confining to me. Yet it is not, or at least I do not find it so. There seems to be, like the freedom Richard Lovelace found in prison, an odd liberty within the confines. And a chance for creativity.

I have written over twenty of these sonnets over the last ten years, and have shared a few of them with you in past posts. Tonight I am sharing one about autumn.

Sonnet 3
Christopher Bogart

When autumn breezes whip through bright-hued leaves
And strip the bowing branches, bark and bare,
Their clatter can be heard from sheltered eaves
To the dark recesses of the black bats’ lair.
Air seems to be so crisp and colors bright,
As winds whip through the brittle brambles brown.
Dry leaves skitter scatter through half- light
To follow the last rays of the rouge sun down.
Soon deepening darkness will envelop all,
Save faded ribbons of pink that streak the sky,
Thin clouds that have followed the faded ball
As season, sunset and the day’s dusk die.
Fall is a feast our seasoned eyes must see,
For all our lives soon strip bare like a tree.