What You Can Overhear
Today is President’s Day in the U. S. In honor of President’s Day, this week’s poem is What You Can Overhear — a poem that uses U. S. presidential administration terms to mark time.
Officially started as a celebration of George Washington’s birthday, President’s Day was modified to include celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Then it became a “Monday Holiday,” which means it has a scheduled Monday in a given month, but no longer falls on the specific date for which it was originally designed. Now President’s Day is one of those barely-celebrated holidays that theoretically honors the service of all former US Presidents. So, it has become a bit watered down. In practice, it’s a welcomed day off from school for kids and a holiday followed by the government and some corporations. It is definitely not celebrated with time off by the retail industry, which is now a couple months removed from Christmas and needs a reason to run sales and get people out shopping during the blahs of winter.
Anyway, here’s the poem:
What You Can Overhear
Truman, Roosevelt — one fellow
born each administration —
one dated a French girl in North Korea
one remembers gunboats
or Dien Ben Phu
both look better than dad looks
though he’s twenty, thirty years younger
watch movies, war movies
they don’t know each other but agree
they go to the VA
and all movies are war movies
the science of sleep will not help them
but wives drop them off
and will at the new VA too
don’t remember seeing each other
argyle socks
and volunteering at the museum science center
one of the volunteer ladies at the VA
was run over by a car
she had just retired
it’s been more than a year
she was a nice lady
terrible tragedy, terrible
thirty five years after three in regular army
all in postal service–
the United States postal service–
the other did thirty years corporate
after getting out of the Navy
over thirty years
in research at a building empty now
not blown up but if you look in the window
it’s filled with boxes
once you were on top of the world
now it is all down hill empty bad
Roosevelt
Franklin D that is
Roosevelt to Trump in one lifetime
you just don’t know about that guy
been going to lunch with these guys
since 1952
What’s With That Painting?
The photo accompanying this post is a detail from the fresco, The Apotheosis of Washington, painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1865 inside the dome of the rotunda of the United States Capital building. I took the photo last fall while on a school field trip with my eighth grade son.
In the fresco, George Washington is mythologized as being elevated to godhood, with the goddess of Liberty on one side and the goddess of Victory on the other side of him. Freedom, armed, is below him attacking Tyranny with the aid of the fierce bald eagle. You can read more about the other figures in the painting (including what I haven’t been able to depict in my photo) here.
If you enjoyed What You Can Overhear
What You Can Overhear is a previously unpublished poem. You can read more of my work on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Have a great week, and look for another poem next Monday. I hope, if you are off work today, you have a relaxing day off. If you are working, perhaps it will at least be a bit quieter than usual so you can be more productive.
Comments welcome.