Doggerel

Is poetry art? Not the poetry I read. R.I.P. Walt Whitman. Is Rod McKuen still alive? Is Elizabeth Head?

Blossoms With the Past
by Elizabeth Head

Perfumed air, brilliant hues
Cause me to wonder and to muse
What ship brought thee from afar?
What voice named thee oleander?

A tip of my fedora in Ms. Head’s direction for the afar/oleander match-up. Not many poets would have forced the rhyme but she pulled it off.

I am reminded of an episode from my past. The scene: a front porch on a summer day on Deslondes Street, that boulevard of cracked pavement and disposition. Two shiftless men are sitting on the porch, one in a chair, one on the steps. They appear to be on the nod.

The one in the chair says, “Jonah, he lived in a whale.”

The one on the steps stirs himself. “Whatcha say?” he mumbles.

Chairy sez: “That Jonah, Jonah…. Jonah, he lived in a whale.”

Steppy ignores him so Chairy sits up, indignant. “I said he made his home in that fish’s abdomen. I said Jonah, he lived in a whale.”

Chairy snorts, “That ain’t necessarily so.”

That is how a master forces a rhyme. I didn’t come up with it. The nice thing about having a young audience is that they don’t know when I steal from Gershwin.

If you are going to steal, steal from the best. I learned that in New Orleans.

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