Knoxville, Summer 1985

Rare rear view of the back of Knoxville-born author James Agee’s now-demolished childhood home at 1505 Highland Ave in Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Tennessee, August or September 1962. From the Fleming Reeder Collection

Knoxville, Summer 1985

 

Walking down Highland
and 13th to a sudden
dead end.
Sun-blistered asphalt,
vaporizing generations of
mystery fluids,
floating in the air like
jungle-breath.

I have expectations of finding
something here but
I don’t know what.
An experience, maybe.
An answer, possibly.
Art?

Surrounded by clapboard houses
in sweaters of kudzu,
I walk the middle of the street
with the swagger of youth
in cheap shoes.

An audience of thrift store
furniture on front porches
applaud random Tibetan prayer flags
giving needed shade to
the molding Bud Light coolers.

And I see her there.

That one girl
reading
on her porch.
She doesn’t look up.
I don’t say “Hello.”
The daily routine of
passing strangers.

But I turn and chance
a few steps down
her walkway.
I offer my outstretched
hand.
She looks up,
places her moist fingers
on my palm
and unfolds herself
from her
musty armchair,
the cushions bleeding foam
onto the old wood porch.

I spin her like a
princess carousel
then pull her toward me,
my hand in the small of
her back.
She presses
her cheek to my chest
and I smell her
coconut hair
for seconds of eternity.

We sway to distant
music from Cumberland Ave.
but do not speak.
We both know too well
what we would say;
emotionally charged laments about
life as a twenty-something.
School.
Poverty.
Overcontrolling parents.
Why don’t they understand?
Sometimes we aren’t sure
we will survive or
that we even want to.
Why is the world so confusing?
Pointless?
Sweaty?
Like this moment.
This moment I’ll
never forget but
the wine on her breath
tells me she will
by morning.

Her mouth parts for
a whispered word but
I quickly raise my hand.
“Shhhh” I say.
“I’m going to get towed.”
I touch her lips softly
with mine;
that awkward kiss
of two people who just
met on a sweltering, summer day
and already have regrets.

Dewy, brown eyes behind
her glasses tell me
we are eating
supper for the
6,205th time
in Farragut.
Visiting our daughter
in college.
Weeping at the birth
of our third grandchild.
Purchasing side-by-side
cemetery plots.

She is small and pretty and
I am certain her heart
belongs to someone else.
While I borrowed it
for a moment, I am too young
and too clumsy to hold
it longer than an hour.
A year at most.
I bow and kiss her wrist.
She returns to her book—
never looking back to
me as I retreat to the
safety of the sidewalk.
I step in gum.
Dirty, florescent-pink strings
stretch from my shoe
like cruel party streamers
from a cancelled wedding.

I walk a block and
see the city panorama
in gold mirrors. There is
my own life in a single,
solitary square
of the Sunsphere.
It looks down upon me
like a wise,
yet emotionally unavailable
Appalachian grandfather.
With tobacco in cheek, it
says to me with a muffled drawl,
“There is a world of porches.
There is a world of books.
Life is a dance for
the ones with expectations
and the one
who constantly looks.”

—Rick Baldwin ©2018

2021

2021

There are no bad years.
There is no 
real thing 
as a year.
No real months
weeks
days
hours
minutes
seconds.
Only now
eternally blossoming
being born
at this moment.

Bad is a veil of mind
on a collection of
memories.
A phantom
restricting you from 
seeing
living
knowing
reality.

What is
cannot be
caught
trapped
labeled.
To simply experience
is freedom.

— Rick Baldwin, 2022

Cedar

Cedar

Cedar
rooted in
ground

wind-brushed,
branches dance

worms sheltered
beneath its bark

dying as she lives.

— Rick Baldwin, 2020

Morning Rain

Morning Rain

Some will wake early
to witness a sunrise
but for me it’s the rain
tapping on the street
tapping on my roof
tapping on the leaves.
A percussive symphony
drumming against the
windows and electric box
like a thousand broken clocks
keeping stuttered time.
The crispy “swish”
of automobiles
fade into the dawn
inspiring streetlight painters
to swirl asphalt abstracts.
A breath, and I return
to the silent music
of a perfect meditation.

—Rick Baldwin ©2018

Forbidden

Forbidden

He was born
desert frost,
a Kansas avalanche;
an impossibility
in her
life
posing as savage
fantasy
they both carried
under their
skin
like a virus fiend.

—Rick Baldwin ©2018

Jackson

Jackson

Murder at midnight.
   Warm, crimson light
      against the
         Oldsmobile’s
            cold, green, steel skin.

Undercover crickets in
   a foggy 1962 field,
      screeching
         like white noise
            in the black gloaming.

Haggard men hoarding
   hate like rare coins
      pause for gasoline
         then churn dust
            from bald tires.

Tomorrow at the bank,
   the agency, the classroom,
      the factory, the church
         and the precinct,
            they will call
               Jesus a friend.

                 —Rick Baldwin ©2018

Elusive Blood

Elusive Blood

To be you,
I didn’t know you;
one arm around my mother
the other hand on the wheel.
Laughter on
your side of the door
rarely heard on
this—
still comforting
in a weird way.
Your secrets
had no home with us
probably just as well.
But I would have liked to
have known you,
I think.
I might not have liked you
any more but
maybe I
would
understand.

            —Rick Baldwin @2018