A Rambling Raconteur

There are many things I don't remember about the time right around when my father passed away in September of 2007. My memory gets a little fuzzy around the edges and the timeline of events gets screwed up. I've lost days and weeks from that year. But, mercifully, I do remember one thing with absolute clarity: I remember the last conversation I had with my dad.

It was Tuesday. I was walking around campus. I had been to the bookstore earlier that day and had bought him a present. I don't remember where I was going, but I decided to give him a call and tell him what I got for him. (His side of this phone call is in bold.)

>Hey Daddy! I bought you a present today!

> What'd ya get?

> A book. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

> Oh, cool! I've always wanted to read that.

> Good! I'll give it to you when I get home, okay?

> You can read it when I'm done.

> Sounds good. I love you.

> I love you too.

> Bye.


Yeah. He had a terrible habit (one my brother tends to share) of hanging up the phone once I said goodbye! Eh, I didn't mind. And I still don't. I don't mind that we didn't get "to say goodbye." Because the last thing my father ever said to me was that he loved me.

I read the book I bought him. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It's good. It's about a guy's theory that his practice of taking care of his motorcycle himself is what truly allows the motorcycle to be his and for him to enjoy it. How fitting, seeing as how I'm still learning from my father that we can't expect everyone to take care of everything for us.

He taught me how to shine my shoes, how to check the oil in my car, how to put a new seat on a bicycle, how to use a record player (and just generally have good taste in music).

That last one I think has stuck with me more than most. Dad's favorite musician was Bruce Springsteen, known as "The Boss." A year or so ago I wrote this poem about my dad and about Bruce Springsteen. (I'm fairly certain that as a young child that I thought they were one and the same, but that's beside the point.) Enjoy.


The Boss
a poem by Sarah Wofford


From inside the womb
was heard a rhythm,
a gentle thump
that sounded like
Nebraska.

She emerged from the darkness
into a familiar stranger's
waiting hands.
Callused palms that cradled her
as he swayed and sang
about a dead dog
who existence
would always bring a tear to her eye.

Together they would
sing the songs
of this six-string guitar god,
some lower deity
descended from Elvis's Mt. Olympus.
They sang of velvet rims,
yellow men,
and racin' in the street.
And no one could touch them.

Not illness nor death,
nor the thick Jersey air.

They were tramps.
Together.
Born to believe.

Religiosity


My religion is that of
Jesus Christ of latter-day Romantic poets.
Love is my religion.
Isn’t that right,
St. John Keats?
I have faith
in what I cannot see.
I am certain
of what I hope for.
The rhythm and meter
of my life
will end
in two perfectly rhymed couplets,
five iambs each.
My eulogy will flow
from the lips
of children and angels
and not a soul will weep
for me
for I will finally be
where I belong.
The Lord will meet me
in the halls of prophets
and etch my name
into His grand anthology
of poets and singers and
various and sundry
rambling raconteurs.
Until that day
I will follow a path
that is not marked,
a trail no map
could plot.
Loving all,
doing harm to none,
teaching generations
of my successors
that free verse
and blank verse
are not the same thing
but that Jesus loves them
anyway.
Reminding saints and sinners
that the grave
knows no denomination
but only asks
“Who do you love?”
Informing intellectuals
that it is the pen
and not the printing
that makes a poet
and that the hallelujah chorus
should not just be saved
for holy days.
My last recitation
shall by my requiem
and I will follow
the Great Bard of Bethlehem
home.

To the Deeping Wall
- a poem of battle and friendship -

Once more,
to the deeping wall we go.
To that stone wall
built
out of the dust
of our insecurities
and second thoughts.
Never will it be crossed
by our enemies.
Too much of our pain
has been mixed
with its mortar.
Too much of our anger
quarried
its stone.
Once more
we stand at our positions,
defending the keep
from an enemy
whose making would probably lead
back
to those of us who villainize it.
But never the matter,
a villain is villainy
when it threatens to burn the gates.
So onward we set
out from our homes
riding our
plastic particleboard horses
to acts of anti-heroism
and deep confusion.
But to the deeping wall we charge!
There our every breath
is the opening note
to our last stand
and stanza.
Our weapons,
merely props from Shakespeare’s
lesser plays,
but our battle cries
echo
all the greatest sonnets.
We will meet you
face to face
and this is our victory!
No matter if we win
or lose.

God Save the Intellectuals
by Sarah Wofford

God save the intellectuals.
Their hard-fought cynicism
certainly won't
do the trick.
Throw a rope
to those over-philosophizers
for they are drowning
and their hope
is too far ahead of them
to help.
They are not-
perhaps-
scoundrels,
but the plot
is slowly slipping
through their grasp.
They have forgotten
the usefulness
of cheerfulness
and refuse to keep their chins up
for fear
of losing their heads.
They are certainly not
the enemy,
but they
bear a resemblance,
do they not?
They have made
Thoughts
their master
and forgotten
they were children once.
Children with faith enough
to climb
the tallest tree
and laugh in the face
of the sunset.
They now confuse
an optimistic disposition
with the blind naïveté
of one
who has never seen the world.
They believe that
to have any modicum of
Faith
with any hint of
Understanding
one must be jaded,
with one's collar
turned up against the world.
Living
is but a struggle
to survive
to the finish line.
They would see the evil
in all but themselves,
ignoring the equality
of their nature.
God save the intellectuals,
before they try to save us all.

I live in the sea,
tossed between waves
of unspeakable sorrow
and overflowing mirth.
This life is a river:
either bone-dry
or lapping wetly
at the underside of the bridge.
Often both.
Often it is a rushing
emptiness
or thunder
booming
from a clear sky.
This is where there is no middle ground.
No port of harbor,
no anchor to settle you.
There is only the faith
that your boat
- this self made
by hands not your own -
will withstand
the belly-fulls of laughter
that leak tears from your eyes
and the body-wracking sobs
that end in chortles
of incomprehensible laughter.
Perhaps you can not know one
without the other.
If joy
is knowing what you have
and sorrow
is knowing what you've lost,
perhaps
those who truly laugh
- at this oft-discussed "life"
and the merry fools
that populate it -
are those
who have learned to grieve.
Having gasping, messy
tears
visibly shake
our crouching figures of flesh
makes us privy
to those moments
when the stillness permeates our noise
and - beyond alive -
we are living.
For we have touched both ends
of an endless circle
and are riding out the storm
under a cloudless sky.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Henry David Thoreau


Most people have heard this quote, or something very similar to it, and yet we only partially put it into practice - if we do so at all. We tend to roll our eyes and forgive or ignore so-called "eccentrics" when they seem so loudly and purposefully out of step with our own rhythm. Some would see the quotation - from a writer who did so much more than provide us with fodder for repetitious platitudes - as a free-pass for all those with the ubiquitous wish of being thought exceptional. Were he here to discuss it with us, I believe Thoreau would tell us that we were missing the point.

He is not merely telling us not to make fun of the kids on the playground that we think are weird. That's part of it, sure, but not all. What about the person who's thinking track seems to be a little off center from the rest of the office? The artist who's unfinished painting appears to be a detailed rendition of pond scum? The writer who gets so excited at a new idea that you'd think she'd found the lost city of Atlantis under her bed? Okay, that last one is hitting a little close to home...

My point is that I believe Thoreau is trying to tell that we need to celebrate and embrace those that never quit thinking, those that are always imagining, always searching for the perfect rhythm to step to. He isn't implying that we all need to dress like the Lonely Hearts Club Band 24/7, but we oughtn't quiet those who keep the stream from becoming stagnant.

Three cheers for the thinkers, and one for you, Mr. Thoreau.

The first twenty years
of my life
were a fight.
A fight
against everything.
Like a toddler fights
against
every playpen
you put him in
against
every bite of food
that might do him good.
I raged at every turn
without prejudice
and without payment
for what I did
and what I had.
Every iota of energy
was used
against! against! against!

I felt tired
too early
and old
too young.

May the next twenty years
be a slow surrender
to who I am becoming,
whoever that may be.
May the fire in my spirit
be the hearth
by which we sit.
May I live
in quiet revelations.
May I always long to touch
the eternal
with my simple, mortal
hands.
May I breathe
slowly
and deeply
so that every flavor in the air
alights briefly
on my tongue
in a flicker of understanding.
May not a day pass
without learning
or a night
without courage
to face the dark.
May I stave off
stagnation
and always court
change.
May I never be dead
while I am
living.
May I never beg
for more days
than I am given,
whether twenty years
begets another twenty
or not.