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t. k. splake |
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Paula it is still nighttime darkness at lac la belle as faint shades of first light are etching streaks across the far horizon. the forest lakeside swallows haven't begun their trilling welcome yet, while in the cool silence of the moment, antoine j domino's "look at me i am in love again" is echoing through my bardic brain and skull cavity. just when this old graybeard sack of achy bones thought he would never possess romance again, i met ms kathleen. kathy is a slender, sexy woman, with rich exotic black tresses, more then twenty years younger than i. she tends bar at the "copper falls house" in allouez, a few miles north of calumet on highway m-4l. yesterday she served me a rare afternoon cuppa-cuppa of caffeine and rally-go that gave me the push to finish out the bardic day. i have already forgotten how our conversation led from one thing to another, and yet suddenly i was holding her in my arms in the midnight full moon at the calvary cemetery. i still have the taste of kath's sensuous mix of nicotine, perfume, and the musty sweetness of growing feminine desires. i also felt my dormant male appendage slowly growing and becoming the companion of the swollen hernia bulge next to my scrotum. my hernia dilemma and discomfort is a candidate for later autumn surgery. after driving kath back home and our purred "good nights" and "good mornings," we agreed to a michigan house dinner in a couple of days. the ancient verse-smith, having not been to bed all night, decided to take his warm after-glow to the lac la belle poet's sanctuary to think things out. reflecting upon my past relationships, of which there have been very few, i noted that I have always loved my splake women, if not wisely, then without conditions. i have brought to my romantic liaisons and marriages the belief that it is necessary to combine and balance sacred emotions with profane feelings. the heavenly bliss of a guy and girl relationship involves a commitment to a yin (loving) and a yang (fucking) in order to maintain a lasting togetherness. during the early coming into lac la belle morning, i mused about the failures and divorces i have experienced in a long and full lifetime. i wondered if it is possible that i have only been deluding myself and if all of the lofty preachments about love have been about being in love with the idea of love? i wondered, too, if my past relationships have merely been the whispered acting clichés from the 40's and 50's with an occasional woody allen shy cute aside. or, do i seriously possess the deep fiery emotional passions of a creative persona like frieda kahlo, and the past loves and lovers have failed to measure up to that over a longer period of commitment? during my early lakeside musings, i also pondered the compatibility of a successful relationship with the loneliness of being a poet, and the solitude demanded for an angler. as the first dawn bleds into the dark clouds rapidly vanishing in the west, and lake swallow begin their morning song, i thought of a mother's day several life chapters ago. one may morning as i was driving back to camp from a visit to the melstrand store with the day's "splake general delivery," case of chilled blue ribbons, and tub of crawlers, i spied a couple of bicycle riders. it turned out to be a sunday morning mother and young son, fishing poles lashed to the handlebars, their bike tires weaving a wobbly passage along the highway's edge. back then and this morning, i thought what a supremely fine gift--a son sharing the secret location of his prized brook trout fishing haven. his mother's labored pedaling and effort to keep up, her way of replying, "thank you," and "i love you too." the early morning thoughts of kathy, our last night graveyard romp and trysting, as well as the future we might share together, brought back distant memories of paula. paula was a college student of mine, a young mother of two daughters. an age and then some ago, we shared a wild-ass october weekend in the autumn colors of michigan's upper peninsula pictured rocks lakeshore. my old ford bronco left pebbles flying in a cloud of dust as we raced across the kingstone plains along the adams trail, through a tunnel of reds, oranges, and golden fall foliage hues. i remember our stopping to picnic at the remote sullivan pond, little known and another splake trout fishing spot. we enjoyed the most perfect bardic feastings, dining on sharp cheddar, ice-numb blue ribbon long necks, spicy wisconsin brats, leaving a sea of spermy dribbles on our "roading it" blanket. neither paula nor i wanted our magical october odyssey to end, but sadly we turned the quiet sunday highway miles back to battle creek and home. as time passed, paula finally decided that she couldn't leave her daughters and abandon her marriage. her decision, while fair and understandable, pained me deeply and wounded my basic bardic soul. it was the "after paula' love poems that provided the emotional healing and helped me see the wisdom of moving on. yet, i still get my paula poems out from time to time and reminisce those good times, asking myself continuously "why," and "why not?" [Chapter from the book Lac La Belle Morning to be published by TS Press.] |