SMITHEREENS



Best to be prudent with a computer virus
Macs are pretty immune to viruses
Not bullet-proof, but close

One doesn't want to start getting cocky
About viruses or one's machine
Any machine

Last night I watched a mega-ton monster truck
Hurdle itself after charging a ramp
And just about lift vertically in the air

All to smash a pumpkin grown over the last six months
(it grew 50 pounds a day)
Into smithereens

The pumpkin didn't stand a chance
It was something like 1600 pounds
Yes, a huge pumpkin maneuvered here and there by forklift

It was smashed with one downward thrust of Mr. Monster
But that wasn't enough
It never is

The truck went thrashing away
Always looking ridiculous with little body and all-wheels these things
Only to return to grind up the pumpkin more and more

The owner said each seed was worth $500
I've grown pumpkins and carved pumpkins out for Halloween —
There's lots of seeds!

Supposedly there's some magic genetics to these giant pumpkin seeds
I put down what I was reading, Wendell Berry's The Mad Farmer Poems
(no kidding)
To witness this gross exaggeration

I don't know why I haven't gone nuts yet



Bob Arnold says, or have I ?



image: http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=3896

MARIE PONSOT









ALONGSIDE THE POND



At the edge of vision

just short of sight

pond air shimmers pearly

unbroken ungated. Bright

mist engages me

silent unmediated.




When I turn

and look into it



I want birds.

Share a poem this morning from one of the skilled technicians, as she has been since her first book from City Lights True Minds, somewhat forgotten in the San Francisco publisher's legacy since Ponsot was and is no Beat, but she is thoroughly beatitude. Poetry of the fullest senses. This may be her most interesting book, published in her late eighties, and pushing pushing at the no-limit edges of the poem. Lyrical gems, tv program news, personal portraits, landscape art. The silence and small bigness of this poem alone had me in its aura. And aura is that instance when nothing else matters.

FILE FOR THE 22 PROSE PIECES



Dear Joj,

So it is you, and not Jewell, who is sending out the prose pieces. 22 to be exact. I like the title and it looks like everything came through okay, except for how the titles got separated from each body of text. Probably missed the 'enter' button as you maneuvered or broke the pages between each prose poem? I'll know best when I receive the hard copy, which will be the same as hard cider, or hard liquor. The real deal. The paperwork. Thanks for sending both, J. Never mind you having to prepare the ms., between one virus'd computer to a better mate's and completing the job. We keep saying to folks, like we owe stock in Apple, get a Mac get a Mac.

Like I mentioned before, I won't (but I will) get to reading until after Nov 5. or so. That initial date by you was put into my hard head and I won't be able to re-program any earlier. I read an essay yesterday on Ralph Nader where it was presumed much of his problem getting across with the new society we have is that he is too damn literal. He means what he says. As opposed to a million-billion out there who are white liars. The essay also dragged along and also presumed some of his other problems is that he has never had, seemingly, a sexual relationship with anyone or anything. No girlfriends, no wife, they can't dig up a hooker or even an under age intern or fawning school girl or boy fascinated by old greasy stories of General Motors, Corvairs or arcane environmental abuses.

No, I don't believe for a minute you are one of the white liars.

And perish the thought I am asexual.

Next week is consumed with doctor appointments once again, breaking in with a new dentist who I have heard is past thorough, tracking down snow tires, returning to 'Mad Men' (Midas, yes them!) because since I wrote that piece and our forceful letter of complaint to the corporate office, they have returned with a deal on a complete exhaust system that really can't be turned down. Do I now trust them? No. In fact I've just now at this early hour conjured up all sorts of scenarios where the one disgrunt foreman in there tosses in faulty pipe just so the system botches up by mid-winter. Payback is hell, and we limp back and ask, "So what's this?" Since August I have been rolling under the truck applying muffler cement to the catalytic-converter region with my fingers. The only tool. Quiet the beast.

I know you have no time for this lengthy letter, but I figure between Joj and Jewell it will be read.

We've been debating all week between us if we should head north this afternoon for a book sale in the town where Ken Burns lives. We've gone the past two years when it was simpler, Saturday morning, and no fee of admission. Suddenly it is at a cost of $10 each, in the evening, only for an hour and a half (Saturdays was spend the day with us) and it's all about the special occasion. This often comes with the special prices way over a literal person's head. It could be a bust that makes a rotten way to start off Halloween. It could force us, if the sale is zippo, to dress up and parade around in this faraway town with toddlers asking for candy. "Aren't you two too old?" will be the dominant question thrown at us. In fact it would be said in the tone that isn't at all a question.

This is a rather long letter of acceptance declaring your poetry manuscript has arrived and I will begin reading when I shut up.

You owe me a long letter one of these days which only begins to detail your shyest of secrets
all's well

photo © bob arnold

A BLACK TRUCK, BLACK BUG, AND THE BLONDE

I have read all of Thoreau’s Journals. I started at age 15 and have been through it now a few times. Last Fall I reread his rambles in Maine again, nice and woolly, but I think I’ll take another peek and see if Greenleaf H. Davis gets mentioned. Peter Garland just sent to me in a letter a notice from “Foundational Maine Fiddler” all about Davis. Thoreau tended to stay skimpy on many personal names, but not always. One goes to Maine with Thoreau just about in his sleeping blankets. You’re there. Sweetheart and I went deep into Baxter State Park in 1975, three moose just about clipped our black VW while jumping the road we were rounding our way on. That same car got us to Newfoundland and way up the rugged sea-swept western coast. Too bad the car was totaled in a freak Christmas morning accident on ice two months later. Almost into town (12 miles from here) and all in an ice-storm, taking it at 25 mph. is my guess, and coming around a corner there were two vehicles waiting for us stalled on slick ice. Both lanes boxed. I was driving and instead of trying a squeeze between either vehicle (even with the VW probably not) I stayed in our lane and aimed for the GMC 3/4 ton truck looking at us with the wide radiator panel. Hit it square. It turned out a mother and young son were inside, the mother pregnant. No problem to the truck, or mother, but our bug was gone, leaking gas everywhere from what got busted on impact. I shouted to the kid to run up to the corner and flag down anyone coming...turns out a buckaroo in a black pickup was storming our way. The kid did his job and the truck ended up going flyless off the road and down into the brook. Better there than into all of us. As I remember in the other lane, the couple were elderly and paralyzed. Stayed put. Naturally in 15 minutes the sand truck finally showed up and budged everyone free while we were stuck with a cop, and Christmas morning mind you, who refused to give us a lift back into town. Must of been my ZZ Top beard? We ended up hiking, for weeks later, the two miles up river to the village from our cabin, to catch rides with neighborly neighbors going-in.

photo © bob arnold

BIGGER THAN YOU



So many have lived like I do in the far off country
And no one knew them either —

Farmers, Woodchoppers, Spectacles, Poets
Frozen feet inside well built boots gone worn

Work hands in big gloves
Nostrils watering and pinched by the blunt morning

20 below zero
River barely with a sound

That’s the ice —
Climb down through the trees, always get closer, you’ll hear something

Poem after poem I write and it's the woman I love who reads them
By firelight, by window light, by her own light

Not many buy my books in bustle world
Don’t fret, don’t weep, write more!

I write enough poems to fill a small book just
Carrying the ash pan out to the snow paths

Spreading ash onto the ice so no one slips —
First rule of poetry: no rules, Be Considerate

All of this is done in a day world of sunshine
Or beneath a night world of oh-my-gosh stars

Could we possibly count them all?




Bob Arnold says : it’s all in the title

LONGHOUSE AUTHORS LIVE, WORK & PLAY OUTDOORS!







Below are new booklets NOW.

Visit ~ What's New at Longhouse Fall 2009

~


WATCH FOR
FORTHCOMING
NEW TITLES
BY

THOMAS MEYER, JOHN LEVY, ANDREW SCHELLING, TOM CLARK, BOB ARNOLD, AUSTIN SMITH, JONATHAN GREENE, THOMAS A CLARK, JANINE POMMY VEGA, GUY BIRCHARD, CID CORMAN

Bill Porter, The Great Kashgar Bus Convoy — a two booklet wrap of Bill's travels in China on the Silk Road, where he has also drawn from ancient poetry & texts translated as Red Pine.

"In the Fall of 1992 Finn Wilcox and I set out on the Silk Road from its eastern terminus in Sian/Xian. Four weeks later, we were sitting in the lobby of the Chini Bagh Hotel in Kashgar. We had traveled as far west in China as we could go and were waiting for word on how to proceed to our final destination, which was Islamabad. The Karakoram Highway was the only road there, and it had been closed by landslides more than a month. And there were no flights."







Gary Hotham, Sand Over Sand —Whether Maryland, Germany, Norway, small poems go with Gary — this single leaf foldout of a dozen new poems.




sunrise –

a moth that didn't get

out of the room



~



within hearing —

new leaves

a day older



~

which star

—

which star

further

Gerry Loose, Starworks — Gerry on his houseboat, wood's trail, or town walk blown this way from Scotland — double leaf catch of many many poems.





soft owl calls in dawn snow just

so & snow calling dawn owls in



~



the pond's interior has two herons

inside I swim slow air



~



leaves still on the tree wind mooching

as far as they're able I'm rooted here








Bob Arnold, My Sweetest Friend — A triple brochure wrap of 38 poems as one-long-poem tribute, concerning the sudden loss of an older sister who was once a close childhood friend.


HONOR

let me tell you one thing about suicide

if a loved one has the guts or the heartbreak
to pull this off, you better have the same to
say this is how it all ended

even if you argue with her or him in your mind
every day as you bake bread
rake leaves
drive to work
return library books
tie your shoes
walk a cross walk
mail a letter
split wood
and try to sing in the shower again









Jason Clark, Abandoned Kingdoms 1-6 — Jason's artist notebook of abandoned tree houses from the northern woods — six portraits on fold-out leaf with the artist's text, and one poem by Bob Arnold.

















Bob Arnold, On Which~Way Trail — love poems from the woods and the trail. 24 poems wrapped in a variation of handmade covers and endpapers.



THE GARDEN


I see her out a window the one I love
She sees me and smiles

Looks to me again and smiles

Really, she was leaning to look
At the start of spring lettuce



~



BEING HUMAN


Seeing this —
let me today

if only for a
few moments

twirl like
this autumn

leaf, midair
just like

that, with-
out a care


Visit ~ What's New at Longhouse Fall 2009

BACK ROAD CHALKIES OCTOBER 09

photo © longhouse

~

& Remembering Soupy Sales!

(1926-2009)

ABC OF READING

a.

Today in town a woman student from Bennington College in high leather boots and tight jeans approached me on the sidewalk as I pawed through $1 LPs in crates and asked if she could take my photograph. I had already noticed her from afar. I looked into her face and asked what the photographs were all about. She said she was on a school project, something about sidewalk life and people in Vermont towns. Bright eyes. A smile that worked well. Acne. I smiled and said, "Okay" and just kept on looking through the LPs. We were alone. Sunny sidewalk. People passing by and the slowed down midtown traffic. I heard her camera shutter work six times before she had enough and then she said, "Thank you", still smiling. I said, "Good luck."


b.

After town today, and all the errands, we came home to work in the woods. I hand split all the cherry tree that was waiting down in the woodlot. It's a huge pile. Spread through the sun. It'll be three truck loads to get it home on Wednesday. Now you know what will happen on Wednesday when Junior Pilot, our son’s puppy, is back again with us and the cherry wood comes home and gets stacked. We made this plan sitting on a stump taking a breather while we each ate an apple Sweetheart brought from the house in a bag with a bottle of cold water.


c.

Then came evening, after supper, Sweetheart fell asleep by the fire still dogged by the lyme disease and still making the most of every day. Sunshine in the face, hard at work daytime pushing it through, and I’ve got more stovewood to bring in for this fire. I tell myself this. The woodfire (a friend) always tells me this. Should I check into the Angels and the Yankees game, or Phillies? and I get to neither. Instead I look and read through the new and big beautiful book of Jim Marshall’s photographs with Janis blue sky on the cover. San Jose shot, 1968; a wonderful memory and in Marshall’s eye not gone at all, not gone at all. And when I’m done with the book the phone rings like a fire engine in the night within these small rooms of woodfire and lamplight. It’s Janine Vega to tell me her very good friend and her poetry a very good friend to me Lenore Kandel has passed away. Janine once went to Hawaii with Lenore, when they were both young. Flying into and with that blue sky San Jose day.

GOODBYE GOODBYE

LENORE KANDEL

POET


1932-2009



…the face of all the gods

and beautiful demons

WHAT IS OCTOBER










a


little


rain





a


little


shine







this is the sort of poem that has to be found at the right-time, otherwise there are millions out there and I could be one who sez aloud: what in the world does he think it's all about out here, we're hurting, we're broke, we've just been fired, the hospital visit sucked, the snow tires can't be found, the puppy made a mess on the floor, the day's going to the dogs and rain, and the donuts were stale and nothing hurts more than a stale donut Sunday morning, so get this itsy-bitsy stupid poem out of my face. And you dare it anyway.

“If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.”— Elmore Leonard

10 AM




in full sun —



catbird

phoebe

hummingbird
(between the two)



on the telephone wire

as still as






It is now October and Bob Arnold hears the catbird hanging around, the phoebe gone, and the hummingbird is memory

QUESTIONS THAT ANSWER




INDOORS



Is it raining out?

Are the leaves moving?






OUTDOORS



Is it raining out?

Are you wet?





Bob Arnold says be practical — don’t answer the phone before answering the door.









RETURN TO THE EARTH



When the one I love drives away in the morning
I blow her a kiss


When I see the oriole fly from apple tree to maple tree
I love the world


Impending rain clouds darkening the hillside to the east
— that’s morning!


I have a bathroom with a rotted floor and all facilities in place
Get down to work


I have a bathroom that used to be an outhouse
Built over an earthen floor


The house is 220 years old, what did you expect?
Return to the earth


Friends write to me this morning from all over the world
We have come this far


But it is now raining
The oriole has gone hidden


I think of friends
Standing on earth






Bob Arnold says — It don’t mean a thing / if it ain’t got that friend (swing)

JONATHAN GREENE





This is a calling-out to all to give a full embrace right now to our good friend Jonathan Greene — rushed this morning into a Kentucky hospital for brain surgery. This is the moment, we are its time.



Friday PM update: We hear from Dobree — Jonathan has come through surgery and is resting. Terrific news.



For further active information: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jonathangreene/journal

Bob and Susan Arnold

WORKING THE AUTUMNAL WOODS
Vermont

Here we are / here you are

setting up the villa of bucked stumps to hand-split, all rock maple






taking care of our son's puppy Junior Pilot, a kiss






a full tree split, stacked cairn, walk the ground






tools of the trade & helper





an apple a day....






in the bowl of sunshine





maple splits & a little beech added in



finis




all photographs by Bob Arnold except where he appears, then Susan Arnold took over. October woods c/o of Vermont. Planet Earth. No cellphones, no roads, tell time by the sky. Wood cut and split for winter 2011.

NO WAY OUT

I was with Sweetheart yesterday on the rounds between NH-VT hospitals and the battery of her tests. This is all a ragged trail continuation for a year and a half now fighting Lyme disease and one mysterious ailment followed by another that has come with the bugger. You'd rather not be a head-case, if you don't mind, but you are. I am, perhaps, more than Sweetheart as I try to protect her, get her to appointments, swim salmon up-river with the medical riff-raff. More tests tomorrow: a CAT scan. Next week the colonoscopy. The staff are all middle-aged women and devoted, the doctors are these things locked in their cells. They won't give an inch until they've supplied the insurance companies with a galaxy of costs and put the patient under the proverbial thumb. The new-fangled hospitals are all like cheap coated luxury motels. The elderly decked out on the mezzanine floor in box seats, piped in music of some sort, shit head carpet, junk art on all the walls. The whole contraption just breathing in and exhaling out two scummy words: heart and cancer. There's no evidence of real heart anywhere, just the flagging one. But like I say, the ton of pleasant professional women as receptionists and nurses etc are holding the whole place up. And probably back at home, too. They are truly a new salt of the earth quality all to themselves. There's a million ways into the place, wide glassy doors, but no way out.

(so get playful)

I went into another hospital two days later and gave three vials of blood. It should do me for the next 4-5 years or so, except for the prostate which I stay up on. Though I am reading more on the iffy of all prostate tests. I decided to do all the tests to be a good sport while Sweetheart is dragged into her own test after test — be a true companion during this miserable rut. The nurse on call was extremely pleasant. She saw the new Flannery O'Connor biography I had as traveler with me for all the waiting I would be doing that morning and asked immediately what I was reading. I put Flannery down on the bench nearby and pointed back at the book and said "Flannery O'Connor", the same way Columbus said "America". With pride. She said O I don't know her work, should I? I said you most definitely should, but later I realized as with Celine or Beckett even Flannery has to ride with a footnote: can you take artificial niggers and the violent who bear it away? If not, don't go reading. She then asked me why I would read such a book...was I a teacher or?...and the words stopped there and her eyes widened as she searched mine. The coast looked clear so I told her I was a writer. Being a very pleasant woman she said "Oh" and really meant it. She then asked if it was possible to find my books in the local libraries and I told her it would be and I drew a map on my palm just where the books were in the library, what shelf, last dusted and how long the books have sat there untouched. I told her there were a few libraries in the area with said books of this blood giver. I also offered that the fine book store on Main Street had my books. She didn't look ready for me to tell her the store also had Cid's selected poems and it's been there for two years. Untouched. Even after Sweetheart put it on display (taking down someone like Heaney who has had enough exposure). All the while this was going on the poor woman couldn't find my vein. Well she found it, but it kept "slipping away". She dug deeper and poked a bit harder. I saw her walk in at 9:30 and she took me in at 9:40 so I was her first patient and I was only sorry she had to get a slippery one so early in the day. She told me I would probably bruise and I smiled knowing she was going off at the end of the day to buy all my books and start her poetry library...what's a bruise?

Bob Arnold says, if you can muster it, go to a doctor with a song in your heart

JOHN LEVY

Rory Fingerlin Reading

Last night the American poet Rory Fingerlin read at Thompson Hall. This reading was co-sponsored by The English Department and The University’s Legalize Pot Now Association (LPNA). Fingerlin, author of the poetry volumes FINGERLIN IS FINGER-LICKING GOOD (1992) and KAFKA FOR DUMMIES AND OTHER INSTRUCTIONAL MANUALS (2002), read new poems from his work in progress, IF I PLACED MY IDEAS IN CARDBOARD BOXES AND DROPPED THE BOXES IN QUICKSAND WOULD THEY GO ANYWHERE DIFFERENT?

Fingerlin was introduced by Michael Butler Smith, who praised Fingerlin’s poetry for its “zany unpredictability” and its “extraordinary noise-scapes, possibly the most musical poetry written in English in the last decade.” Near the end of Smith’s lengthy introduction he read Fingerlin’s poem, “Hot Air Balloon Filled with Llamas and Ostriches Floats Above Pot-Smoking Tourists Visiting Mount Rushmore” in its entirety. Smith ended his introduction by singing a song he wrote about Fingerlin’s poetry, accompanying himself on banjo.

Fingerlin mounted the stage and surprised the audience by announcing that he is studying tap dance and wanted to perform a dance he had just finished creating a few days earlier. After what can only be called a stunning performance, with a number of brush steps and flea hops, Fingerlin informed us that what we had seen and heard was based on the meter of two of his favorite Shakespeare sonnets.

Fingerlin then read “A Dozen Written In Tiny Spaces Above Earth,” a suite of twelve poems that he wrote in air plane bathrooms this last month as he flew from campus to campus on his latest whirlwind reading tour. He said he set himself the following challenge: he would enter the bathroom and write furiously until the moment someone knocked and/or pounded on the door. Some of the poems end mid-word.

All twelve of these poems begin with self-portraits written as he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. The poems proceed in wild and varied streams of consciousness, full of peculiar images and rhymes and insightful (frequently Freudian) reflections on his fellow passengers. After Fingerlin finished reading the twelfth poem of this suite, he received a standing ovation which lasted two minutes and 41 seconds. In an interview I conducted with Fingerlin after the reading (to be published in the university literary magazine later this year) he said this suite of poems has received standing ovations after every reading and noted that our ovation lasted 17 seconds longer than any other standing ovation he has received this year. His wife, who accompanies him on all of his reading tours, is his time-keeper. She times not only any standing ovations but all tap dance performances. In addition, she signals to him when he has been on stage for exactly 90 minutes, at which time he finishes whatever he is doing and asks the audience for questions.

During the Q and A session following the reading, one member of the audience asked Fingerlin if he had created any other original tap dances. Fingerlin revealed that he has also finished a brief dance based on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” After the same member of the audience pleaded with Fingerlin to perform it, Fingerlin obliged. The dance began with a 27-second soft shoe then accelerated with a 19-second patter after which Fingerlin dropped to all fours and joined a rattle with his shoes to a slow melancholy riff employing both his ring-studded hands. He rolled onto his back, appearing very much like a beetle on its back waving its appendages uselessly. The standing ovation for this performance lasted one minute and 23 seconds.

After getting back to his feet, Fingerlin responded to questions about the nature of inspiration, the state of the economy, his series of 84 haiku about Tiger Woods, his recent editorial (published by The New York Times) about thematic trends in contemporary American poetry, and the differences between metrical concerns in poetry and in tap dancing. Next he graciously thanked the overflow audience and did a remarkably rapid front shuffle step all the way out to the lobby, where he signed copies of his books for the next 52 minutes.

We have already begun trying to raise money to have Fingerlin return to the campus next year. Any and all interested donors should call LPNA between midnight and 2 a.m. any night (Sundays included).

~

John Levy makes his bread & butter as a public defender coming to the aid of those down & out in the Tucson Arizona region. His books of poetry & prose include Among the Consonants (Elizabeth Press),We Don't Kill Snakes Where We Come From (Querencia) Oblivion, Tyrants, Crumbs (First Intensity) and The Nightest (Longhouse). A family man, John is married to the artist Leslie Buchanan and is right this minute working on his first novel.

JONATHAN GREENE

NEW CONTEXTS FOR OLD WORDS

VIRGIN BACKS LONDON MARATHON

VEDANTA COULD STILL MINE

RICH PROFIT SEAM IN INDIA

KARMA COMES STANDARD

Not the Virgin Mary, but Sit Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, part of the Virgin Group, sponsoring the race for a five-year deal worth £17m, Weekly Telegraph, May 21-May 27, 2008, p. 31

Not the Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads but the mining company, Vedanta Resources,

Weekly Telegraph, May 21-May 27, 2008, p. 33

Not karma as in Hindu and Buddhist thought, but software that is included when you buy

a Kanguru Eco Drive, MacConnection Catalogue, v.294c

Jonathan Greene has long been the proprieter, typographer, designer, and chief bottle washer with Dobree Adams at Gnomon Press from the Kentucky River watershed. His many books have been found in the best poetry collections since the 1960s. His skill at harvesting just the found-words, as above, is a craft shared with his once Appalachian neighbor and friend Jonathan Williams.



and from the editor: In Memory today of Will Inman's passing

PURPLE JAPANESE IRIS

poem by bob arnold, art work by Jacqueline Laufman, photo © susan arnold

A sidewalk poem done right on the spot — one of Bob's poems as he read it and the musician and artist Jacqueline Laufman heard it and drew the poem onto the street. Just one of those heralded moments in an October once upon a time, when Dudley & Jacqueline came to town to read poetry and play music on the street with us that day to raise money for Katrina victims. Many years later and many are still waiting for recovery. The poem washed away by the rain. Where are we now?




PURPLE JAPANESE IRIS




Where you stand

They just about

Touch your lips




BOB ARNOLD

REMEMBERING MERCEDES SOSA

July 9, 1935 – October 4, 2009

photo © bob arnold

DAY OFF

Yesterday was wonderful after we left the hospital and dropped off one more of Sweetheart’s medical tests. Now the day was ours! We drove north to a college town and arrived at 9 a.m., just in time to freeze in a bakery that took all day to warm up. When we returned at 5 o’clock in the afternoon to find an evening sweet to share on the ride back home, the bakery was now too warm. Very Goldilocks. The town is the closest place we can think of to the film Pleasantville. It is all collegiate. There are no rough and ready folks anywhere, and if there are, they stand out. The streets are almost paved in gold. The Barnes & Noble was accepted by the town but it is not allowed to call itself Barnes & Noble; it remains The College Bookshop. Though it is not. The quality of books has gone downhill since it was The College Bookshop and all of the charm of old ivy league intellect and color has been misplaced by a bland Starbucks counter. What once smelled like books that Bennett Cerf once touched, now smells like Betty Crocker. Same initials, but.

All day we walked the streets, side neighborhoods, into the trees and sun-felt campus, nibbled foods, paged through a ton of new books — JG Ballard stories, photography by Eggleston whom I love, a Denis Johnson crime caper, Wendell Berry farming essays, and I scuttled through the new issue of Poetry (hit & miss) and Paris Review (pretty darn good). We then went back to the college campus and tracked down the exhibit room for Dr. Seuss, an alumnus. Nice room but really for that burst of Seussian energy, it's all bottled up. A friend recently told us the true outdoor world for Seuss is at the Springfield, Massachusetts museum quadrangle, a spot on earth jumping with Seuss characters. We’ll have to have a look. Believe it not, the shaggy Appalachian Trail plows right up through the main street, but it’s completely invisible, except when a starry-eyed wanderer is caught all bundled-up and booted on a street corner waiting for the light to change. In downtown Pleasantville. If you are ever in this town, and stuck, we can tell you where every free bathroom is.

A New England boy, Bob Arnold believes you love and fight to save the small town.

LAST MAN STANDING

photo © bob arnold

FARMER

A beautiful pickup truck with the fanciest side mirrors on both doors. It seemed like 3D. This is the truck the heavy set worker arrived in. The t-shirt was gray and molded over a barrel chest and double barrel gut. The arms the size of my thighs. Something happened along the years because he couldn’t hide the limp. He was coming to measure up a wood pellet furnace. I could tell he didn’t know all that much about the furnace except he burned pellets in his own wood pellet stove. He knew the pellets were shipped to the northeast from the Rockies, Pennsylvania and somewheres in Canada. Canada always gets a “somewheres”. It’s a big place. Since he didn’t know much about pellets, and his body was a steady workers, I asked him what he did before pellets. “Farmer.” One word sufficient. But said with the great tongue of a cow so it sounded like “Fah-mar”. I suddenly loved the word more than ever. He said he once had a farm called River Maple. And I said my wife and I for 35 years have passed the large barn sign for this place and always wondered why it wasn’t Maple River. “Well, which came first”, he asked me, “the river or the maple?” I said, “The river — it feeds the maples to grow.” He smiled at that, as if his grandfather who gave the farm this name once explained it to him this way when he was a boy. Yes, he suddenly looked boyish as we said goodbye when he left.

Bob Arnold likes the fact that every single word in this little yarn is true.

NOW IN VERMONT

photo © susan arnold

SOMETHING




Isn't it something how the gentle breeze just doesn't stop

In the woods with us the sound of leaves

Out on the ocean an eye-field of waves

On the prairie the prairie

Nobody can stop it

Nobody

Bob Arnold was once told by a developer — ‘nobody’ lived out where he lived in the woods — developing was a piece of cake. So Bob & friends organized about 500 nobodys to attend a meeting of developers to say hello.

WORK CREW

photo © bob arnold

THOUGHT



When I was a lumberyard worker, bored out of my mind, I’d find a cool spot in the shade and hole up there and think awhile, even read

Today I landed in a lumberyard looking for luan and found a bored big worker and from a long way off I could tell he was twittering with his Twitter

Such a big guy looking like he was playing with his thumbs

ON FIRE



I spoke to a small Irish fellow today who likes to drink and work on gas heating. We were thinking of hiring him for a job here. Something I could work with him on. His hourly wage is extremely reasonable, which was one of the attractions, and he is the foreman of our gas co. He would do this as moonlighting, thus the cut rate labor cost.

“Any Saturday is good”, he said. “But catch me before the heating season begins in late summer.”
I nodded.

Then he mentioned how he blew up a gas job where most of his body was a ball of flame. Another worker was fortunately on hand and pushed him out and rolled him onto the grass. Still, “the flesh on both my arms were dripping off. I could bring you the pictures. You'd puke."

Sweetheart’s now looking at my guidance about hiring or not hiring this small Irish hard drinking fellow.

Q & A



Got any snakes in the house?

Nope. Just in the firewood.

Garter?

Yup. Maybe a half dozen in this stack of wood.

How about brown recluse?

Not here.

I got stung in the lower leg, almost killed me.

Where?

Around here, even though they say the spider isn’t around here. He found me. I was 11 days in the hospital. An Oriental doctor is the one who saved me and neither of us could speak the same language. A hole the size of a half dollar in my leg. And the stink, whew! I guess it was my rotting flesh. For awhile there I was on drugs where I was seeing rats in the kitchen. I know they weren’t there but I saw them.



Bob Arnold gets many poems with people messin’ with his head.