Just for you, Vegas. Heidi ho and away we go! (BTW, when I deleted this, I forgot I was deleting my reference to your poem. So here it is in it's entirety. Thought if nobody here liked it, I'd read it to Mama, so I copied it!)
Actually, Mrs. Thompson, at twelve, I was probably pondering the lint in my navel!
This is heavy duty for a kid. VERY good! You woulda scared the bejeepers outta me, if you'd told me this at twelve. "Warm breath"...yikes!
I think the story behind my first "serious" poem is FAR more interesting than the piece. I don't know if I'm up to typing (or remembering) all of it, but I'll start it and maybe finish later.
I had just turned 14 in the spring of my sophomore year. Ms. Taylor, our English teacher, gave us a last second assignment (right before the bell rang) on Friday, to write a poem "about life" over the week-end. The high school baseball team had a game that night and a double header on Saturday, so the assignment never crossed my mind. We won the first two, but lost the Saturday night game, embarrassingly (could we maybe have been a little tired? ). Anyway, Coach Roy made all the starters come to practice after church Sunday afternoon...for THREE hours...very little practice, mostly running our cans off.
That night, around eight, a guy in my English class, Ricky Plyler, who lived up the street, comes by and asks about the poem. "OH NOOO!" It hadn't once crossed my mind, and I can't give Ms. Taylor a reason to browbeat me. (That woman did NOT like me, and I never knew why. I later found out that she suspected {but couldn't prove} that my older brother had put a very real looking rubber snake in her drawer, (though he wasn't even in her class at the time) that scared the crap out of her. That might have had something to do with it, but I can't say for sure. But I digress.
I was too worn out to think, so I asked Mama to wake me up early next morning. She did, and I wrote a poem about life. Went to school and about 10 minutes before first bell, Mary Petty, class genius, whom I'd known since sixth grade, approached and asked to see my poem. She is about the only person I would have allowed to see it, as she and I had a history of poetry contests, orations, and the like since seventh grade. She read it and said it was excellent. (Understand, Mary knew I had a secret life, which I tried VERY hard to keep separate from my "other" life as an athlete and regular ol' guy, so I knew she would never out me when it came to certain endeavors that ball players simply didn't do...back then, anyhow.)
Bell rings...social studies, followed by English. We enter, take our seats, and Ms. Taylor announces that we'll be reading aloud as many of the poems as we can get to during the period. My heart sinks.
First person she calls on is David Browne (football player, later the starting center for the University of Tennessee). I can still remember the opening....
To me, life is like a bag of popcorn
In the early morn
Or later going to a picture show
And seeing Marilyn Monroe (yes, she was already dead! )
Anyway, that's all I remember. In fact, there were only about four more lines, but I had my face in my hands thinking, "Dear Lord, you gotta help me out here. Life...LIFE. EVERYTHING is life!!!" (But in my goofy brain, I had taken it literally as LIFE, pure unadulterated life, the ACTUAL word "life".)
She spent about a minute criting his disaster, but was generally praiseworthy and encouraging...and that set the trend. She seemed to be calling on those (especially jocks, nearly every guy in that class was a member of one team or another that I played on) who had no aptitude whatsoever for poetry.
And theirs were all similar to David's (though not THAT obtuse )in that they were about day to day living.
I'm watching that clock for at least four hours (the periods were 45 minutes), when, ,finally, with only about 10 minutes to go she calls on Sandra Frederick, who IS involved in the arts (choir). That's a wrap, fer shure! Sandra's is bound to be a long one, much as she jabbers. No...such...luck. She's decided to create a limerick, which brought the house down, but even with the ensuing laughter, only about 2 minutes lapsed. I found out the next day that Ms. Taylor had already seen Sandra's limerick (had to be pre-approved for bawdiness, which it wasn't [bawdy] ), so she, in fact KNEW there'd be time for one more.
Needless to say, after the room had quieted, she said, almost with an air of, ("Nyah, ah-ah," {as she twirls her handlebar moustache} "I gotcha this time Mr. Big Shot")..."Ben Burton." I was in complete torment. I didn't respond.
"Uh, Ben, get up and read your poem. NOW!"
No response.
"Okay, so you didn't do your assignment? Well, I don't care how many GAMES you played, mister, an unexcused assignment drops you one letter grade." (More so than that reality, I was stunned at her reference to the baseball games. Heck, I didn't even know she knew I did anything beyond her class.)
I was on the verge of tears, but I was prepared to accept that fate, rather than risk alienating by fellow teammates, by revealing what a weirdo I was.
Suddenly, a female voice speaks up. "Uhhhh, Ms. Taylor. He did TOO write his poem. I think he's just too shy to read it. I'LL read it, though."
"Well, Mary, since you didn't get called on to read yours, which I already know is wonderful, I suppose it would be okay," she said haltingly. (Dang, I'm getting too sleepy...I'm sitting here thinking I'm writing a novel!!! she said HALTINGLY? Good grief!)
So Mary walks over to my desk, opens the pad I wrote it in, and takes it to the front of the room. Our eyes met briefly, as she gave me a look of, "this is for your own good, Burton.. I immediately looked down, placed my palms over my ears, and squinted my eyes tight.. As she began to read, I was caught in two strange netherworlds, one the harsh reality of how I would be perceived very shortly...the other, of hearing Mary's distant voice reading so beautifully, as I had heard many times before, but with the knowledge that, for the first time, the words were MINE. It was surreal. We had read many poems to each other during free periods for a few years...Poe, Whitman, Eliot, Sandburg, Frost...a lot of the biggies and a few obscure, but this was a first. Mary was good, I mean, really good. She made nationals in one of her speeches.
The poem....
A Miracle?
The miracle designated life
Come and goes, yet always comes again
'tis at a low ebb during strife
And epochs of discontent
And nocturnal years
And eras of sadness
Leading many on a path to madness
But Oh, the joy that it brings
And the melodious song it sings
Almost too much to ask for
But Oh, the horror it brings
And the deafening bells that it rings
To drown out all the joy and songs
Crushing one under it's endless throngs
But the joy that it brings...
But the BELLS that it rings...
But the joy that it brings...
Enough! Have your life, my boy
You have it but once for to spend
Oh! This mad miracle called life
Will it NEVER end
The silence immediately following was as deafening as the bells. Mary returned to her seat.
Ms. Taylor cleared her throat, and went right into the next day's assignment. At the time, I was totally relieved.
After class, in the hall, these guys were huddled up talking while casting furtive glances at me as I stood at my locker. Had to think fast. I approached them.
"Hey, com'ere guys, listen to me."
Brownie says, "I swear, Burton, I heard you had some weird ways, but this beats everything!"
"No, no, no, ya'll got it all wrong. Hear me out!" I walked in close and lowered my voice.
"Alright look, ya'll know what happened this week-end. I forgot all about the assignment." Plyler was amongst the group, and he vouched for me. "Well, I looked through some old books of my Mama's and found one with poems, and when I saw the one about life, I" (whispering) "copied it."
Now, I was in a whole 'nother realm.
Brownie said, "Man, Ben, she could get you for pladenism" (heck no, I didn't correct him!
)"if she ever finds out!"
"Yeah, I know, but I didn't have any choice. The book was really old, so I'm hoping she never sees it. Ya'll keep your traps shut, though."
"Wow, that took some more guts, Ben. Don't worry, we ain't gonna say another word, but old lady Taylor (she was 28 ) is likely to be burning the midnight oil trying to find that poem."
I have just gone from Mr. Weirdo to the ballsiest guy in school.
I turn and look to my right, and standing, with her arms folded across the notepad on her chest, not five feet away, is Mary, shaking her head in wonder, with a wry grin like I've never seen.
An hour later, in our free period, we discussed it. She asked if I had even heard her reading, and for the first time, I gave Mary Petty a big hug, and said she was so wonderful, she almost made me cry.
Then I got upset over Ms. T's dismissal of it, after making nice comments on everyone else's poems. Mary said she probably DID think I had copied it, and that became a running joke for the rest of our days together in high school...Christina Taylor going home every day to dig through mounds of books in her mansion (her husband owned a major glass company in town, so they were well-heeled) determined to find me out. Of course, looking at it now, it's hardly something worthy of publication in ANY poetry book, but it all worked out well for me. I continued my secret dalliances into plays, poetry, orations and choir, while maintaining my standing as a dumb jock.
Oh, in case you're wondering, my brother, Jack.... He told me years later that he had, in fact, put the snake in Ms. Taylor's drawer.
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Field of Dreams
