Five Poems by Wendy Freborg

 

AFTER AN EVENING AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE

Last night at City Lights

there were poems inside my head,

inspired by the books I read.

Tonight my mind is dull and bare.

there’s nothing here for me to share.

So here I sit, frustrated,

my ideas flown like birds,

intending to write poetry,

producing only words.

ALARMS

Water running through pipes. 

Refrigerators and front doors closing.

Footsteps on stairs. 

Car engines warming. 

No rooster need announce apartment mornings.

ASSESSMENT

Our romance has featured all the warmth 

of this December morning

and the compassion 

of the steel structures that surround us:

we are as close as summer.

Your taunting remarks and my brittle laughter,

the gleam of feigned security in our eyes,

our self-sufficient smiles

are the points of a fragile snowflake

that spring’s first winds will melt to tears.

A COWBOY STORY

Hopalong Cassidy was my hero, 

circa 1950, when I was three-ish.

I wanted to be a cowboy too. 

I studied my trade on TV,

watching cowboy movies on the tiny screen.

I didn’t have a horse but I had 

the hat,

the boots,

the holster,

the gun, 

the all-black cowboy suit just like Hoppy's.

I wore it all day, 

even on the hot hot summer days. 

When my sisters left for school 

and it was just my mother and me,

our house became a ranch.

My mother would call me “Pardner”

and buckle a holster over her apron.

Her idea of fun wasn’t always fun, though.

She’d say things like, “Let’s clean the bunkhouse,”

or “Time to get some grub going” 

After a while I’d go out back,

to protect the sandbox from the bad guys

or imagine swings were horses.

PLASKETT CREEK INSIDE MY MIND

When my work gets very boring

and, whatever I’ve been doing, 

I find I’ve been doing wrong,

I go to Plaskett Creek inside my mind.

I would lie in the sand,

listen to those cold waves crash nearby,

feel the sun beat down on my body’s aches

and relieve the tension in my mind.

On rainy New York Saturdays, 

stuck indoors with the roaches and the leaks,

I shut out city horrors

and go to Plaskett Creek inside my mind.

When the evening wind rises

and the tides comes in,

I will climb up the slope

and sleep with the pines.

Whenever I’ve been doing things

I learn I shouldn’t have

I only worry for a while,

then I go to Plaskett inside my mind.

Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker and former editor who writes poetry and humour. Her work first appeared in print in 1964 when the magazine Ingenue published one of her poems. More recently, her poems have appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and WestWard Quarterly and her humour in Little Old Lady Comedy and Defenestration. Her life includes one husband, one son, two grandchildren, enough friends, too many doctors and not enough dogs. Her pleasures are her family, crossword puzzles, learning new things, and remembering old times.