| Biographical Non-Fiction posted September 29, 2015 | Chapters: |
3 4 -5- 6... 
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Poems started their marriage; poems ended it.
A chapter in the book Poetry and Poison
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 5
by Sis Cat
| Background When both parents died eleven weeks apart, Andre Wilson embarked on a quest to discover what happened before, during, and after their marriage. He used their poems as clues to uncover the truth. |
LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:
Now I understood the poem I had found in my mother’s bedroom the day after she died. She had scrawled it on the first page of a Japanese notebook on January 22, 1967:
I write because I must and I must because I must, must, must.
She had left the rest of the notebook pages blank. I read this poem at her memorial service. Now I write because I must, must, must.
Dawn lightened the cobalt sky I glimpsed through vertical blinds. I closed my laptop and captured some sleep before a non-stop day of church, shopping, lunch, and recitals with my family.
Afterwards, I had to leave what remained of my family and drive up north to San Francisco. With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I stepped backwards out of my mother’s bedroom to take one last look at the boxes that awaited my next visit. I paused in the doorway, kissed the tips of my fingers, and pressed them to her door. “Thanks, Mom, for the inspiration.”
Driving up I-5 from LA, my gaze turned towards the dead almond orchards along the interstate highway threading California’s Central Valley. Row upon row of cut trees covered the drought-blasted landscape. The workers had left the trees where they fell. The orchard resembled the forest that the Mount St. Helens eruption had flattened in 1980.
STOP THE CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL
a warped sign read in front of the orchard, accusing the government’s water restriction policies of amputating these trees, like the Big Bad Wolf who blew down the Three Little Pigs’ houses made of straw and wood. Reaching for my water bottle in the console’s cup holder, I wondered what explosions awaited me when I returned home and resumed my search for any companion poem my father may have written for my mother’s poem, “Soul Artist.”
#
I arrived in Hercules. The former dynamite-manufacturing town flourished after the factory closed in the ‘70’s and the explosions ceased. My condo stands as one of many that mushroomed in the factory’s former blast zone.
In my guest bedroom closet, I sorted through my father’s poems. One poem struck me as similar to Mom’s because he also wrote about creation. He titled the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” This poem glowed on my radar screen for months and then years. I did not focus on it because I had assumed my father had plagiarized my mother’s poem. End of story.
One day, my fingers stayed from plucking a basil leaf from a branch. I washed my hands of Parmesan and olive oil, and then abandoned my pesto preparation in the kitchen. I entered my home office, opened the closet door, and grabbed the only book of poetry my father published, Soul Reflections, Heart Expressions: The Art and Poetry of Fred R. Wilson.
My hands placed and opened the copper-toned book to the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” Its opening line sounded similar to the opening line of Genesis. I darted to the bathroom, snatched the Bible from the toilet shelf, and returned to the office. I compared the Bible’s opening line to the first line of Fred’s poem:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
“In the beginning there was the earth.”
I recoiled from my father’s poem. “There is no God or Heaven,” I said. My eyes scanned the lines. The pattern of a Godless creation continued. Fred only mentioned God once as a “wisher” of fish, not a Creator. The earth simply “was.” Evolution reigned through chemistry. The poem continued:
The sun comes up each morning. / The moon comes out each night, / and that is the chemistry of life.
There fell rain / which made the flower Bloom, / and feather and nurture the soil of the earth / from dusk to early noon.
Run wild the animals / that roam the blandish land. / They breed and flourish— / Another form of chemistry from generations past.
The birds and the bees / fly o’er this great sky / traveling to and fro / carrying on their life cycle until their time to die.
All about us lies the great ocean / containing the fish— / Man’s greatest supply of food / Another form of chemistry that of God’s wish!
I read the final stanza:
Then came Man and Woman, / the highest level of Life, / One of the most complicated of all chemistry, / That of Man and Wife.
My chest tightened. Tears rimmed my eyes. I backed away from this poem and retreated to the kitchen to resume the pesto.
After I picked a few more basil leaves, the poem drew me to reread the final stanza. I had never read my father's poetry book when he gave it to me in 1996, inscribed, "To my firstborn son." Now that he died, I studied each word for clues to who he was and how I came to be. I whispered, “The most complicated of all chemistry is marriage." I nodded and said, “That’s deep, Dad." Before tears could fall on his poem, I fled to the kitchen again.
A few moments later, I approached the poem with a revelation: “The poem is a bookend.”
Jessie’s “Soul Artist” christened the beginning of their marriage. Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” eulogized the end of it. His evolution theme is neither random, accidental, nor serendipitous. He channeled “Soul Artist.” While Jessie asked, “Who painted the colors in the butterflies’ wing?”, hinting at the answer, God, Fred responded with his own question, “What is the right chemistry?” Their poems offered opposing views of the universe. The Book of Fred rebutted the Psalm of Jessie. He dismantled Jessie’s poem, God, creation, and the universe, like the couple had dismantled their marriage. His universe evolved through chemistry alone. He thought, “I remember my ex’s poem ‘Soul Artist.’ That poem started this marriage which ended in divorce, alimony, and child support. How could I have been duped by that poem? Well, let me write my own poem about how the universe really works: chemistry.”
Just when I thought Fred finished his poem, he added two stanzas titled “P.S. In Retrospect”:
On the last form of chemistry, / as I am told by others, / you can tell when things are right. / All forms of order fit their place.
If this be true in this part of my life, / oh, then where is my mate, / if this be the case?
The last form of chemistry—marriage—mystified Fred. How can you tell when things are right in a couple and all forms of order fit their place? Earlier typed versions of this poem in my archives displayed on the bottom the date of October 12, 1971—a year and a half after the divorce.
“Thank you, Dad, for writing the date on your poem,” I said, hoping that wherever he was, he would hear me. “I do not have to search for when you wrote this poem.”
He answered in my memory of his 1985 letter, “I keep extensive records.”
The date of October 12, 1971 followed seven days after my sister Joi’s sixth birthday—among the first of many birthdays he would miss of his children. After the divorce, Fred pondered the chemical imbalance in his marriage. While all manner of animal, bird, fish, and plant populate the earth in his poem, Fred lived alone in his pottery studio. He wandered a Godless landscape and wondered, “Where is my mate?” As he stated in his earlier poem “The Cry of a Lonely Soul”, dated two years earlier in March, 1969, “I have lost faith in the spiritual / For I am but a victim of a lonely soul.” Jessie’s “Soul Artist” and Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” bookended the beginning and the end of their relationship, but what happened between?
The next morning, I drove through haze to work. Smoke from California wildfires had blanketed the San Francisco Bay. From the East Bay Hills, I neither saw the Golden Gate Bridge nor Alcatraz through the smaze. I kept my car window rolled up to prevent the inside seep of outside air. Ashes sifted onto my windshield. My memory drifted to the conclusion of my mother’s poem, “Aftermath”, she wrote after her divorce:
Driving through stop-and-go traffic, I saw through the haze in my mind an answer to my father’s question, “What is the right chemistry?”
“If you want to know if a couple has the right chemistry,” I said, “study their poetry.”
Scanning the freeway to see if police watched to ticket me for “distracted driving,” I steered with one hand and grabbed my iPhone with the other to record a thought I may use later: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”
I saved my recording and replayed it through my car speakers: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”
“That sounds about right,” I said, and drove into the haze of distant wildfires.
Now I understood the poem I had found in my mother’s bedroom the day after she died. She had scrawled it on the first page of a Japanese notebook on January 22, 1967:
I write because I must and I must because I must, must, must.
She had left the rest of the notebook pages blank. I read this poem at her memorial service. Now I write because I must, must, must.
Dawn lightened the cobalt sky I glimpsed through vertical blinds. I closed my laptop and captured some sleep before a non-stop day of church, shopping, lunch, and recitals with my family.
Afterwards, I had to leave what remained of my family and drive up north to San Francisco. With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I stepped backwards out of my mother’s bedroom to take one last look at the boxes that awaited my next visit. I paused in the doorway, kissed the tips of my fingers, and pressed them to her door. “Thanks, Mom, for the inspiration.”
CHAPTER 5
Driving up I-5 from LA, my gaze turned towards the dead almond orchards along the interstate highway threading California’s Central Valley. Row upon row of cut trees covered the drought-blasted landscape. The workers had left the trees where they fell. The orchard resembled the forest that the Mount St. Helens eruption had flattened in 1980.
STOP THE CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL
a warped sign read in front of the orchard, accusing the government’s water restriction policies of amputating these trees, like the Big Bad Wolf who blew down the Three Little Pigs’ houses made of straw and wood. Reaching for my water bottle in the console’s cup holder, I wondered what explosions awaited me when I returned home and resumed my search for any companion poem my father may have written for my mother’s poem, “Soul Artist.”
#
In my guest bedroom closet, I sorted through my father’s poems. One poem struck me as similar to Mom’s because he also wrote about creation. He titled the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” This poem glowed on my radar screen for months and then years. I did not focus on it because I had assumed my father had plagiarized my mother’s poem. End of story.
One day, my fingers stayed from plucking a basil leaf from a branch. I washed my hands of Parmesan and olive oil, and then abandoned my pesto preparation in the kitchen. I entered my home office, opened the closet door, and grabbed the only book of poetry my father published, Soul Reflections, Heart Expressions: The Art and Poetry of Fred R. Wilson.
My hands placed and opened the copper-toned book to the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” Its opening line sounded similar to the opening line of Genesis. I darted to the bathroom, snatched the Bible from the toilet shelf, and returned to the office. I compared the Bible’s opening line to the first line of Fred’s poem:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
“In the beginning there was the earth.”
I recoiled from my father’s poem. “There is no God or Heaven,” I said. My eyes scanned the lines. The pattern of a Godless creation continued. Fred only mentioned God once as a “wisher” of fish, not a Creator. The earth simply “was.” Evolution reigned through chemistry. The poem continued:
The sun comes up each morning. / The moon comes out each night, / and that is the chemistry of life.
There fell rain / which made the flower Bloom, / and feather and nurture the soil of the earth / from dusk to early noon.
Run wild the animals / that roam the blandish land. / They breed and flourish— / Another form of chemistry from generations past.
The birds and the bees / fly o’er this great sky / traveling to and fro / carrying on their life cycle until their time to die.
All about us lies the great ocean / containing the fish— / Man’s greatest supply of food / Another form of chemistry that of God’s wish!
I read the final stanza:
Then came Man and Woman, / the highest level of Life, / One of the most complicated of all chemistry, / That of Man and Wife.
My chest tightened. Tears rimmed my eyes. I backed away from this poem and retreated to the kitchen to resume the pesto.
After I picked a few more basil leaves, the poem drew me to reread the final stanza. I had never read my father's poetry book when he gave it to me in 1996, inscribed, "To my firstborn son." Now that he died, I studied each word for clues to who he was and how I came to be. I whispered, “The most complicated of all chemistry is marriage." I nodded and said, “That’s deep, Dad." Before tears could fall on his poem, I fled to the kitchen again.
A few moments later, I approached the poem with a revelation: “The poem is a bookend.”
Jessie’s “Soul Artist” christened the beginning of their marriage. Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” eulogized the end of it. His evolution theme is neither random, accidental, nor serendipitous. He channeled “Soul Artist.” While Jessie asked, “Who painted the colors in the butterflies’ wing?”, hinting at the answer, God, Fred responded with his own question, “What is the right chemistry?” Their poems offered opposing views of the universe. The Book of Fred rebutted the Psalm of Jessie. He dismantled Jessie’s poem, God, creation, and the universe, like the couple had dismantled their marriage. His universe evolved through chemistry alone. He thought, “I remember my ex’s poem ‘Soul Artist.’ That poem started this marriage which ended in divorce, alimony, and child support. How could I have been duped by that poem? Well, let me write my own poem about how the universe really works: chemistry.”
Just when I thought Fred finished his poem, he added two stanzas titled “P.S. In Retrospect”:
On the last form of chemistry, / as I am told by others, / you can tell when things are right. / All forms of order fit their place.
If this be true in this part of my life, / oh, then where is my mate, / if this be the case?
The last form of chemistry—marriage—mystified Fred. How can you tell when things are right in a couple and all forms of order fit their place? Earlier typed versions of this poem in my archives displayed on the bottom the date of October 12, 1971—a year and a half after the divorce.
“Thank you, Dad, for writing the date on your poem,” I said, hoping that wherever he was, he would hear me. “I do not have to search for when you wrote this poem.”
He answered in my memory of his 1985 letter, “I keep extensive records.”
The date of October 12, 1971 followed seven days after my sister Joi’s sixth birthday—among the first of many birthdays he would miss of his children. After the divorce, Fred pondered the chemical imbalance in his marriage. While all manner of animal, bird, fish, and plant populate the earth in his poem, Fred lived alone in his pottery studio. He wandered a Godless landscape and wondered, “Where is my mate?” As he stated in his earlier poem “The Cry of a Lonely Soul”, dated two years earlier in March, 1969, “I have lost faith in the spiritual / For I am but a victim of a lonely soul.” Jessie’s “Soul Artist” and Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” bookended the beginning and the end of their relationship, but what happened between?
#
The next morning, I drove through haze to work. Smoke from California wildfires had blanketed the San Francisco Bay. From the East Bay Hills, I neither saw the Golden Gate Bridge nor Alcatraz through the smaze. I kept my car window rolled up to prevent the inside seep of outside air. Ashes sifted onto my windshield. My memory drifted to the conclusion of my mother’s poem, “Aftermath”, she wrote after her divorce:
The volcano which has been / Smoldering inside me, / Has finally erupted. / As I watch it slowly die, / I feel a part of me die too. / In time, my love, / Only the ash of a memory will remain / From this fire of experience. / When the smoke has faded away, / Again will I see life clearly.
Driving through stop-and-go traffic, I saw through the haze in my mind an answer to my father’s question, “What is the right chemistry?”
“If you want to know if a couple has the right chemistry,” I said, “study their poetry.”
Scanning the freeway to see if police watched to ticket me for “distracted driving,” I steered with one hand and grabbed my iPhone with the other to record a thought I may use later: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”
I saved my recording and replayed it through my car speakers: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”
“That sounds about right,” I said, and drove into the haze of distant wildfires.
TO BE CONTINUED
 Recognized |
|
smaze=a mixture of smoke and haze.
I reformatted the poems due to limitations of what I can achieve with not-so-advanced Editor. Chapter 3 includes the complete text of Jessie Wilson's poem "Soul Artist" if you wish to compare it to Fred Wilson's poem "What is the Right Chemistry?" One person writes a poem at the beginning of a marriage; the other person writes a poem at the end. These are among several sets of thematically linked poems I uncovered.
The picture is from Google Images and is typical of the signs I saw posted in front of dead almond orchards in drought-stricken California.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. I reformatted the poems due to limitations of what I can achieve with not-so-advanced Editor. Chapter 3 includes the complete text of Jessie Wilson's poem "Soul Artist" if you wish to compare it to Fred Wilson's poem "What is the Right Chemistry?" One person writes a poem at the beginning of a marriage; the other person writes a poem at the end. These are among several sets of thematically linked poems I uncovered.
The picture is from Google Images and is typical of the signs I saw posted in front of dead almond orchards in drought-stricken California.
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