August 14, 2004

• “Summer’s End: A Freeform Elegy”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  August 14, 2004 9:53 a.m.

  
  

  
  

  
  A World’s Fair in Vancouver, the destination
  Out from four years hellish study and no degree
  A vacation with four friends, pile in the car
  Forget the petulant bookish atmosphere
  Rent in twain by Mother’s lapse into rigidity
  And Father’s nightly cries to heaven
  Forget these stifled cries, as young manhood
  Surges forward, get in the car,
  Forget forget forget but don’t forget
  To give out the phone numbers
  For the campgrounds along the way
  In case of emergency break free of fear
  And answer the phone.

  
  

  Tents and cookouts, sunset dinners
  In the shadow of Hearst’s castle
  Watching skittering squirrels run along the sand
  Forget the pains of suffering youth
  And the shards of agony suffered by my parents
  As the great journey begins for life
  A life with common bonds of friendship
  Free from the common bonds of wretchedness
  Born by my immediate progenitors
  Forget pain for happiness,
  And don’t forget to give out the phone numbers
  And don’t forget to be available,
  If circumstance holds true to terrible form

  
  

  Photographs of Golden Gates, with buddies
  Arms encircled round fellowship’s experience
  A long drive into the hilly terrain
  To the evening’s natural campground
  Where, irrespective of common colds received,
  A bounteous dinner of fried fish awaits
  Forget the malificent forebodings from home,
  And relish Nature’s permanence in the mountains
  Chilly, hilly, bright fire crackles
  Spewing embers heavenward, as the crumpled piece
  of paper with the phone number is straightened
  Miles away, and the number dialed.

  
  

  An early evening into the tent, as the common cold
  Obstructs enjoyment further of the evening’s delights.
  But the phone rings in the Parks Office
  At the foot of the hill, and the Ranger pilots his jeep
  Up to the camp, which is settling for the night.
  One of the four lifts the flap to my tent, and calls
  The phone has rung, and my brother and sister need me.

  
  

  Mother has been hospitalized for what seems like years,
  Although it has only been three, the same three in which
  College studies seemed so banal and so dictatorial,
  The same three in which Father has succumbed to two more
  Heart attacks to add to his list.
  Mother has been at Death’s door, and the phone numbers
  Have been left in case she passes
  while the vacation is in progress.
  Like the boy scout, I am properly prepared,
  And face the inevitable as the buddies drive
  Toward the Ranger’s shack at the foot of the hill.

  
  

  Vancouver suddenly seems far away,
  A playgound for more stable times,
  For frivolous and felicitous fancy, far away
  Far away.
  Far from any enlightened bright and cheerful time,
  A phone booth from hell opens it’s maw to engulf me.
  The four nervously pace around the booth, as I dial home.
  My brother is sudden and still, breathing the words
  Sickeningly subtle, and sorrowfully poignant,
  “Father is Dead”
  Not Mother, for whom we have planned
  So precisely, but the other parent, for whom life
  Has played it’s last dirty trick.
  Father, who prayed to the Almighty each night, that
  Mother’s paralysis would end, and peace be restored.
  Father, the rock, impervious to life’s shackled
  Resistance, calmly evincing life’s purposefulness
  And now robbed of it, by another of his
  Heart’s attacks.
  Father, for whom I never thought Death would call
  Is lying on his back in the Mortuary,
  And Brother calls me back home to the House of Pain.

  
  

  The buddies pitch in to purchase the plane fare,
  “I’ve never flown in a plane before”, I mutter,
  Another exciting life experience awaits,
  But thoughts are not in the fuselage or on the wing,
  But miles South on a slab in Whittier,
  With his eyes closed forever.
  And Mother, does she know, Does she grieve
  Behind her lifeless rigidity, and calm
  But tear stained countenance, is she pained?
  The flight rends me from my bucolic reverie
  Quickly depositing me back firmly
  In the House of Pain, where Brother and Sister
  Calmly, solidly, stoically, shake my hand
  Vancouver fades fast away,
  And plans have to be made, and a trip to Mother’s side
  And all semblance of familial permanence fades as well
  Into the misty mordant memories of youth and value.

  
  

  The Summer of 1974 wore long and greivous, unsettling,
  Starting with a joyous rapture, and ending with
  The shearing of familial peace and good will.
  Mother’s eyes glassy with hurt and questioning,
  She died that day during the visit for me,
  And like a spectre, I saw the life drain from those eyes,
  Green glassy mirrors no longer reflecting my soul
  Death came twice and I left forever

  
  

  The sting of perdurable ecstasy unravelled
  The unbid promise of Summer’s unreadable memories
  Lost in the occurrences of time’s plodding callowness
  Staining the soft white of existential illusion  
  Death claimed one in purpose, and another in perception
  No more would vibrant vacation volley toward exhilaration
  In my malleable mind, as I grieve.

  
  

  But Summers end eventually, followed fast by the Fall,
  And Winter’s discontent and folly’s vehicle,
  Driving us into the insanity of purposeless abandon.
  Empty nights faded into fickle mornings,
  And in no time at all, Mother passed, as did the summer,
  Into oblivion, with a marker at her head, next to her husband.
  Together in peace, away from all worry,
  Peace and quiet at last

  
  

  I hardly ever think of Vancouver, and the Fair,
  In lasting agony, I grieve for Parents buried where
  In banks of hilly terrain, neath willows weeping
  So sad and sorrowed tears beneath my eyelids seeping
  Life is sudden, filled with joys and sorrows send
  Seasons pass, with poignant dreams of Summer’s end.

  • 2:36 pm
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