Arteries of Memory: Old Lady Regis, A Poem to Be Spoken

My poetry is almost always meant to be spoken. If you read this, do so out loud.

Arteries of Memory

In the coastal fog-mist, which,

Scratching chest along the ground,

Having rose up above the hill, sits, now stuck and confound

To a gridded square block where within the bounds of

Manchester, Sepulveda and Lincoln I found

Myself, or a piece of what I am.

The sleepy old lady, with wrinkled, shaking hands,

Who smoothed the pavement, such a since-eruption, bumpy land,

Though passing in silence, as mostly I’d do,

Now, Old Lady Regis,

I volley a tribute to you.

When wanting a playground to roam uncontained,

You brought me Cavalier poetry, Johnson, Herrick, Faine,

And when words could not settle my hunger,

You brought me and taught me how life quickly can blunder,

If, I like your houses, would fall quickly in line,

Ignoring the beat-engendered Angels’ pantomime,

Then I too would transform from quartz to lime,

Stoned by my own false sense of incline. Rather,

I should self-style my shutters, spatter my door-handle with ambivalence,

For drawing definition from small points of difference,

Can bring the self out, but shut out others’ sense of self,

Old Lady, Regis, you taught me that integrity does not melt,

That waves of airy froth, and gold-hilted corner stones,

Over time recede, and bend, chip, decay and mold,

Back into themselves, but the self can only grow,

And so after photosynthesizing in your character-nursery I know

Just who I am on the basis of who I am not,

By means of interpretation, interaction, and battles fought,

Regis, Old Lady, though you brought me to my knees,

Blood spattered,

Face tattered,

Ready at once to leave,

The faults were my own,

Your experience real and telling,

Sleepy towns, like you,

My lady,

Afford contemplative places of dwelling.

For what more could I ask?

--Ryan Cavalier