POETS Day! Revisiting Clampitt with Cummings In Mind

Captured in Tommy Thompson Park, Toronto, ON, Canada

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I live in a quiet neighborhood. It hugs a thoroughfare like a drop of water on a spider’s tendril; a bump bound by a busy road to the north and a creek to the south. People from around town occasionally visit to make use of the parks, but there’s no other destination to be found unless you live here or are visiting a friend. You can’t cut through en route to anywhere. Traffic is limited to us and Amazon and as a result the streets are alive with dog walking, bike riding, couple strolling, and kids playing. It’s nice and peaceful, but the best part is the three naked coeds who frolic by the creek.

They rent a house from local doctor who spent two years playing linebacker for the Steelers. No foolin’. Like most nursing students, they keep odd hours studying and shadowing professionals at the university hospital, but one thing is certain: Friday afternoon is al fresco cavorting time.

It’s such a Spring and Summertime certainty that if you, like me, are out of the accursed habit of wearing a watch, you could set the sock-drawer relegated “mausoleum of all hope and desire” timepiece by the appearance of light sundresses hanging from the branches of the upper bank pecan tree. Must be two o’clock.

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POETS Day! Amy Clampitt

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

“Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night / When everything’s a little clearer in the light of day / And we know the night is always gonna be here anyway?” So sang The Starland Vocal Band. “I didn’t want to write an all-out sex song,” said songwriter Bill Danoff. “I just wanted to write something that was fun and hinted at sex.” So he took the title from a Clyde’s restaurant happy hour menu in Georgetown, D.C. he ate at while his wife was having surgery for cervical cancer. “Afternoon Delight” hit number one on the charts and a POETS Day anthem was born. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park, go for a swim, or God forbid, go for a light jog.

It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.

I’m pretty sure my uncle worked at that Clyde’s.

***

I’m not feeling terribly Christian at the moment.

My grumpy old man mood began when The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol. 2 caused a trip inside for a comparison with my high school copy of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. I was very comfortably reading in my backyard and the need for comparison annoyed me to no end.

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