Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Randolph Scott at the Saturday Matinee on my Birthday
…and life's rewards were chocolate bars and nickel bubble gum.
-Rod McKuen, “People on Their Birthdays”
At 78 I am old enough again
To play with my Mattel Dream Car on the lawn
Watch Randolph Scott at the Saturday matinee
And dream of catching a freight train out of town
My grandfather was 78 the summer I was six
He was born in a wagon; he never knew where
Manifest Destiny was an iron wheel over the bones
Of the First Nations, and of mothers who died young
We sat on the back steps while he whittled
And spit tobacco into the grass, and talked
And I don’t remember what he said
Or maybe what he said is in the wind
The passing of my dreaming barefoot summers
And of his life came as these things do -
We turn around and find that the gates of the past
Are shut against us and we don’t know why
I hope that on some shimmering summer day
Fishing poles on our shoulders
He’ll whistle up the dogs, and we’ll away
(There’s no rush – life is fun, and I haven’t yet visited the Kamakura Daibutsu!)
