Plymell Station

For Charley & Pam

“They keep dropping them off”

The cats, you say 

But you were always collecting strays

And now they’ve come to you 

with their bellies and their purrs

I have seen some feral cats

And they do not act like that – 

Must be something special in the air 🙂

***

The cats have claimed Plymell Station 

Not the one from the folds of history

Where the wayward and ambitious 

Wound their way westward ho

But the one in Cherry Valley 

Where the poets thought to go

***

You bought the oldest house in town

The stone is gray and all worn down

Kids with metal detectors come around 

But to live in an ancient house 

Makes one seem young by comparison

***

The kid found a King George coin

But there are far more treasures here

And you know EXACTLY where each one lies

On the dusty bookshelves and in the files

Or dancing Rockabilly on the screen

With a grin as wide as Kansas

And eyes are bright as the Prairie sky

***

You say the cats have souls

I think a kindred soul – for you

Must know how it is to go away from home 

All alone with that brand new car

A future stevedore

A future publisher with very specific memories 

of collating and collating and collating

***

A reluctant academic

Yep, someone found you out there and reeled you in

And so Plymell Station moved East

Where you kept collecting strays

Stray writers, stray musicians, stray students

Stray words, stray phrases, stray images 

First a sword, a Bedouin sword 

given to Pam’s Dad in 

World War II, a Brass sculpture

with the great, big crystal,

Then the paintings on the walls, 

And the carefully wrapped elegies

And the glorious, furious verses, new and old

And the diploma 🙂

***

You were always collecting strays

And that was me back then

And I’ve come to you again

Another beat in time

A Plymell Station    

of the mind.