Author’s Note: My granddaughter Hannah had her twenty-first birthday today.

 

I remember the first time

I held her in my arms,

A tidy, bright-eyed package

Neatly bundled, the mouth

And nose properly arranged

Above the pale dollop of chin,

Modest ears astride the skull

That grew a rufous garden

Of fine, unmolested hair.

 

I made faces, silly noises;

She didn’t laugh, or even smile,

But steadily gazed,

Unafraid but puzzled, maybe.

By the nonsensical nature

Of the world that she entered

So abruptly, no warning,

No explanation for the rude

Expulsion from her warm

And watery sanctuary.

 

It was no surprise that

She became a mermaid,

And swam away one day,

Into the deep embrace

Of a world that I could only

Watch with my feet sunk into the sand

With the tide slipping over my toes,

Splashing up to my knees

Until I ran in terror of a vision

Of small bright eyes and tiny fingers

That wrapped one of mine

With a strong grip, the force

Of a place hidden from my mind

That could not see all there was to be seen,

Could not hear all there was to be heard,

Could only make a face, and speak

A few nonsensical words.

 

© Dennis Hathaway

 

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I sat on a bench in the hospital

Courtyard, drinking a mocha latte,

And wondering why people

Are so unhealthy, in such

Constant need of medical intervention.

I was waiting for my wife,

Who was having some kind of test,

And I began to weep, but silently,

So the man a few feet away

Wouldn’t give me a look.

Wouldn’t think there had been bad news,

Or even death.

What would my wife think if she came

At that moment, that I had

Lost control of my faculties?

That she’d have me on her hands

For how many years?

Bursting into tears over nothing.

Feeling profoundly sad every

Time I looked around.

But I was thinking about the

Woman being pushed in a wheelchair,

And the man moving slowly

Along with the aid of a cane,

And I thought about our dog,

Lying in her favorite place

On her bed in a corner of the room.

I have never heard her complain

Although she is getting old,

And the time will come when

My wife and I will look at each other and say,

Is it time? Will we arrive at that point

Through a rational process,

Through reasoned discussion,

Or will we be smothered in

Bursts of feeling, the kind

That come over you without warning,

The kind of truth that we foolishly bury,

Believing that it will never

Be dug up.
 

 © Dennis Hathaway

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You don’t know where you’re going

Unless you know where you are,

You don’t know where you’ve been,

Unless you know how you got there.

You don’t know what the story is,

Unless you know that the beginning,

May actually be the end. Or vice-versa.

 

Conundrums come in many shapes,

Some elongated, like a sausage,

Others round, like a ping pong ball,

They are something you will know,

When you see them. And vice-versa.

 

Do not despair. If you don’t know

Who you are, you may have a treatable

Condition. There is a drug for everything–

Ennui, nervous laughter, excessive

Intelligence. Just ask the pharmacist.

 

But keep your skin protected from

Full moonlight, or you will become

That which is beyond treatment.

Someone nobody likes, not even dogs,

Although your money will still be good

In the stores that no longer deal in products,

But only matters of the mind.

 
 © Dennis Hathaway

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The day I heard Elvis Presley

I was sitting behind the wheel

Of my uncle’s ’46 Mercury coupe

At the weedy edge of a cornfield

Where yellowed stalks awaited

The rain that would never come,

Where a machine swallowed

And chewed the stunted bounty

Into dross that would satisfy

The hogs and cattle but do nothing

To appease the bank, the creditors

Who joined the dubious appeals

For clouds in the hot, listless sky.

 

I had the wheel in my hands

But there would be no jostle

Over the clodded, dusty earth.

No grind of the starter bringing

The engine to ticking life.

I had come with my father

To deliver a can of gasoline

To the smoking tractor in the field.

 

My uncle was in the Navy,

Somewhere on some ocean

I had never seen although

I had imagined a landscape

Of nothing but water and sky

And I believed that the gray ship

Churning through the waves

Was a fitting escape from a life

That seemed, day by day, to shrink,

To rob the air I needed to breathe,

To surround me in darkness

Filled with whispers of doom.

 

While my father in the distance

Filled the tank, deftly, without

Slopping the volatile liquid

As I had done when I tried,

I turned on the radio in my uncle’s car

And moved the dial through

Static and voices and advertising jingles

Until there came a voice from a heaven

Much different than the one I feared

Because it couldn’t be reached

Without first dying, a heaven

Of possibility, of freedom

From the dust and smoke

And withered stitchings of corn.

Well, that’s all right, Mama,

That’s all right for you.

 

Beneath the chopping guitar chords,

The Mercury’s engine stirred,

The car lurched forward

Then lifted, climbed, and soared

High over the blistered earth,

Over the gray sheen of the sea,

Beyond the earth toward the infinite

Nothing that I dreaded in my dreams.

 

I’m leaving town baby,

I’m leaving town for sure.

 

But I was not afraid.

 

© Dennis Hathaway

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