Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Poetry: My Own Ideal City

      I love reading Erika Meitner's "Ideal Cities." I read it again and again. Reading it helps me focus on the humanity and easily dismiss the concrete, the dirt, the pollution, the disease, and the crime. Its sweetness comes to fruition at the end, leaving me with feelings of hope. In her honor I write my own "Ideal Cities." Unsurprisingly, my version includes birds. I'm hopeless that way. Enjoy writing your own poem or prose about your version of an ideal city.

My Own Ideal City

No city is a panacea but ideal cities
will have parks where yellow-headed
blackbirds amble back and forth
in front of a webcam triggering
images for children to see on monitors.
Ideal cities will allow the last of
the katana winds to blow someone's
hat off his head and down the street
where a homeless man will scoop it up
and wear it to warm his head when
the snows fall. Ideal cities foster
mice which kittens leave on
your doorstep as gifts. Neighbors
in ideal cities will listen to a
jazz aficionado play his clarinet
off-tune and they will stomp
their feet to his beat and someone
will sing that his wife left him
but could she bring the dog back?
Ideal cities will have large trees
at each corner where children's kites
get caught and then get shredded
by peregrine falcons to build their nests.

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Let Lovely Turn of Phrase Begin

JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.