HARRY MOULTER

Harry Moulter was sports editor --
Big, laughing, tough, defiant.
He bullied life, brazenly pushing it around
To suit his whims, which he turned
Into noble journalistic causes;
And he pampered pet projects,
Which he pumped up into great crusades
That plaudits drew with every
Written thrust and parry;
And all the while we cub reporters,
Cluttering the city room,
Kicked the air in silent, secret sorrow,
Wishing we could be like Harry --
Right up until the day he had
His massive coronary.

RALPH JENSEN

As religion editor,
Ralph Jensen visited
A different church
Every Sunday for 25 years,
Writing copiously on Monday
In his newspaper
About each of them.
But when his career had ended,
He, lying there in the hospital,
As his breathing became harder,
And his heart grew weaker and weaker,
Found the doctrines and dogmas,
And the theological hypotheses
Were of little solace;
And the denominational
Disaccords in the teachings
And liturgies fled his mind,
Until at the end,
There were only he and God
Alone at the starting line.

FRANK STANNER

Using all of the mind and none of the body,
Frank Stanner wrote a think piece each day,
Requiring that for three hours he get away
From the noise and intrusions
Of the Whetstone’s city room.

To ensure this privacy, he rented an office
Next door in a building, where undisturbed,
He could push his mind into producing
The daily jewel; but alas,
He never lived to retirement.

There is little one can do to thwart fate;
But it is wise to remember
That just as the mind is exercised,
So must the stupid body be,
Lest an imbalance be created
That will doom the whole.

HUGH COGSWELL

At the Dalton City Whetstone,
Hugh Cogswell sired a column
On etiquette for 32 years,
Probing the nuances of culture
With great faculty and flair;
Perceiving gentility and rewarding it,
Delineating the paths of propriety,
While condemning all that was gross.

One night as he lay gravely ill,
I phoned I would visit him;
And his wife asked if on the way
I would stop by at Miller’s drugstore
To pick up a $5 prescription.

Soon after I arrived at Hugh’s home,
He quit the world --
The only man I ever saw die.
His wife then asked me to return
His medicine and get my money back.
Of course, the pharmacist refused.

JIGGS DURKIN

Jiggs, though small of stature,
Had an extra ounce of cockiness
For every inch that he was shorted.
This and the whiskey pushed him
As camera hit-man for the Whetstone,
Catching errant politicians
With their hands in the till,
Covering fires, murders, muggings,
Impaneling the faces of Dalton City,
Chronicling the beauties of its sunsets.

When the whiskey betrayed him, Jiggs lost his job.
He regained it only after promising
He would join Alcoholics Anonymous.
Once having forsook the bottle,
Jiggs rallied; but it was the excessive
Cigarettes, coffee and poker playing
Until the wee hours at AA
After the meetings
That finally did him in.

SIDNEY HUNT

From the very beginning
He aspired to be a great writer.
He was editor of the school paper;
He wrote editorials, prying out
Words wedged deep in the dictionary,
Fashioning poems from those
That carried music to his ears.
How odd that after a lifetime
Of arduously pursuing beauty of thought
And probing for the elusive truth,
Not one of his old friends recalls
The outpourings of his soul,
Or is aware of all those
Grinding years of creativity.
Strange that instead they remember him
Only as the half-pint high-school boy
Who, one rainy day at Brucker’s Field,
Stood up to Jed, the neighborhood bully,
And thrashed him soundly.

JENIFER SMITH

High-voltage sex appeal --
That was beautiful Jenifer,
And she knew it.
She manipulated the men in the city room.
She could tell how vulnerable they were
By observing the degree
Of uneasiness in their eyes --
Eyes that mirrored disbelief
At seeing no flaw, not even
The smallest feature at a variance.
It was almost as if she had been heir
To some special grace -- that nature
Had granted her total immunity
From the imperfections of the flesh.
But, alas, nature really had given her
Only the sun and the wind and the rain,
And this she did not learn
Until one June morning when,
While admiring her body,
She discovered the lump.

BEN GILLINGHAM, NEWSPAPERMAN

Ben Gillingham handled rewrite
For 25 years, until the paper folded
And left him jobless;
Whereupon he discovered that
His drinking and sedentary ways
Had so stripped him of his health
That no one else would hire him,
And that even had he condescended
To become a leaf raker for the city,
He never would have passed the physical.
So Ben drank all the more,
And when he died, some labeled him
A goose egg on the scoreboard of life --
That he left nothing behind.
Ah, but they were wrong.
I, for one, am his constant beneficiary,
For he provides the impulse
That starts me on the running track
At the Central Y each day.

DWIGHT WESTON

Dwight Weston was business editor.
He could pound a typewriter harder
Than anyone at the Whetstone,
Beating out market news until
The words nearly danced off the page;
And when hi perspiration beaded,
He’d open a window, wipe his brow,
And then let his wet hankerchief
Dry in the breeze by tying it
To the end of the shade cord.

He had been a young lieutenant
In Paris when we fought the Jerrys,
So when World War II broke out,
He would have loved nothing better
Than to re-enlist, but he was too old.
Instead, he devoured the war bulletins,
Convinced that our new conflict
Was the only story worth covering.

To re-inforce his determined belief,
He neglected his own assignments,
Boozed with the investment bankers,
Till one day he embarrassed the editor
By passing the hat for drinks
In the lobby of Hollings Hotel,
And was fired from his job
The very year we won the war.

JUD MARKLIN

Jud Marklin was an opportunist
Of unprincipled arrogance,
Who baited his associates,
Relentlessly probing
For their soft spots,
Constantly reminding them
Of their weaknesses,
Even to how their hair
Was thinning on the top.

But company management liked him,
Mistook his arrogance for leadership,
And promoted him higher and higher,
Until he was sent to New York City,
Where at last he fell
Weighted down by his snide remarks,
His lack of compassion and humility.

Then when he returned,
His knife could no longer cut,
And his insults became only
The tolerated idiosyncrasies
Of a spent old man
At whom we chuckled.

GLADYS GORLEY

In a world of eating and loving
And putting on airs,
Gladys had a jumble of faucets
She flicked on and off
With incredible celerity.
She would laugh and sing,
Turn ecstatically glad;
Then, in a moment, scold,
And, pouting off exuberance,
Become unbelievably sad.
She would hide, sulk, skip, giggle,
Cajole, plead, scream and jump.
She was kaleidoscopic to the point
Of being non-committal; even her
Husband was never quite sure
During the long years of wedlock
That followed that unforgettable night
In the field of Queen Anne’s lace,
When they lay beneath the stars
And a silver-scimitar moon,
Whether she had really meant
Yes or no.

GEORGE MILLER

George Miller was a company man,
Starting as an apprentice,
Working up to foreman, then
General Foreman to superintendent,
And finally to production manager.

He believed in personal involvement
In all shop problems, no matter how small;
His ideas permeated every department,
Boosting output, cutting costs,
And increasing profits.

Yet, five years after he retired,
Employees could remember him only
As the boss who once back in the ‘80s
Accidentally locked himself
Overnight in the men’s room.

HORACE HONAKER

From the beginning
He sought to make friends
In the earnest way
That others seek to make money.
When he reached sixty-five,
He hadn’t any big nest egg,
But there were a dozen
Retirement parties,
And toward the end of the road
He was seldom alone or unhappy,
For his friends were like tall pines
In a grove all around him,
Tempering and scenting
The raw and hostile winds
Of life’s last years.

BUCK HENSON

After you pass sixty,
You see more and more
Old friends in the obits.
One day you say to your wife,
“Do you remember the Hensons?”
She asks which one, and you say,
“Buck ... he just died.”
But she can’t recall him;
Then you ask down at work,
And there, too, they’ve forgotten.
Yet he stays in your head,
And you say to yourself,
Someone must surely remember Buck,
As he was forty years ago,
Strutting there on our corner,
Hitching up his trousers
With his elbows,
Defying all of us who passed,
Saying without saying:
“I’m gonna win the race,
I’m gonna get the girl,
I’m gonna make a million!”

JOHN STEINER

The spinning world kicked him soundly
Each time it passed by; his wife
Ignored him like a burned-out bulb
In a room where no one goes,
And his children, caught in the mania
Of a mobile society, all moved away.

But he continued to grow through a crack
In the rock -- a crack made by his
Reading a passage from Chapin,
Who wrote that “The brightest crowns
Worn in heaven have been tried
And smelted and polished and glorified
Through the furnace of tribulation.”

WOULD THAT I

Beethoven did a job when he composed his symphonies,
James Thurber when he wrote “The Years With Ross,”
Rocky Marciano when he won the heavyweight title.

Now consider that Beethoven was deaf
When he composed his greatest Ninth,
And Thurber couldn’t see to read
When he did the Ross biography;
And Marciano, too, was blind
During those brutal middle rounds
From resin gloved into his eyes,
Before he finally knocked out Jersey Joe.

Oh, would that I could do a job --
Reach out, with two glorious strikes against me,
To capture my great long-sought goal before
I am forever silenced at Sauer’s Funeral Home.

JOHN DORMAN

Why, little moth, do you waste your life outside,
Bouncing against the window below the neon bar sign?
Don’t you realize it’s January?

I marvel how you keep bruising your body.
Don’t you know you will never get in.
You will exhaust yourself and die of the cold.

In a way though you’re a little like I am,
Except that the window glass has you spoofed,
While I, on the inside, am fooled by the whisky glass.

HIGH SCHOOL REUNION

It really doesn’t matter
Who made it in life and who didn’t --
We’re all here together again,
The whole bunch of us.
There’s Benny -- the same old Benny,
And Harry still wearing bow ties,
And Dud still kissing all the girls.
We form a circle, hold hands
And sing the school song.
And afterwards there are dinner and speeches
Until the couples start saying goodbye;
But they never leave the first time.
We meet them again and again, in the hallway,
In the lobby, at the elevators, talking, remembering:
“Oh, I forgot to ask ... Whatever happened to ...?
Have you heard from ...?”
For although in one way they want to go,
They must use every ruse to stay,
So they may savor to the very last drop
The heady elixir of friendship
Distilled in the golden days
When each of us stood tall
And unconquerable.

The trees are bare,
The land is brown,
Earth’s all thumbs,
Till April comes;
Then fields turn green,
Cows reconvene,
And find some chums.

IN BED

While listening to the semi’s
Going through their gears,
Sleep I’ve known eluded me
And left me with my fears.
Then I remembered Mark Twain’s words,
And soon my worries slackened;
He said he’d known great troubles,
But they mostly never happened.

ONE TROUBLE

One trouble with the world is,
And there are many clues,
We’re too afraid our neighbor
Won’t have to pay his dues.

WISH

I know it’s not the thing to do,
And the mills of the gods will grind me,
But before I die I’d like just once
To burn all my bridges behind me.

ANTIQUES

Antiques are a game,
The prices no joke;
Whenever I play,
I go for baroque.

HOLLOW VICTORY

I hung in there,
The years sped by;
“I’ll show them all,” I said.
But now that I have
Finally made it,
All of them are dead.

DEBBY RATIONALIZES

To stick to my diet
Is a war of nerves,
So instead I contend
That bulges are curves.

OPPORTUNITY

Opportunity seldom knocks crisply at the door;
More often it hovers outside the window,
Bobbing about like a wobbly, pollinating insect.
It may even ultimately sting you;
But let it in, for it drips the elixir
Dreams are made of.

SPRAY CAN

A new spray promises to check
Odors around the clock;
But that’s the one place in our home
Where odors we have not.

JOE’S RETIREMENT BANQUET

Through the years Joe’s bosses
Showed him little but disdain.
They passed him by with jaundiced eye,
Considered him a pain.
But at his farewell party,
Those bosses came from far
To praise his name with loud acclaim,
And crown him superstar.

CIRCUS OBSERVATION

For a girl to look proper,
It’s a hopeless stunt,
While riding the neck
Of an elephant.

REDUNDANCE

Her dress was the finest,
The best of the nice,
Until at a party
She saw it twice.

THE DROPCLOTH

I, the dropcloth,
Catch paint spills;
Then, splattered, disappear
Until the next ambitious year.

JIM’S PLACE

I went back to the old neighborhood
Where we kids used to bounce a rubber ball
Against the side of Jim’s barn,
And play deuces wild in his yard
On an orange crate in the summer shade,
With milk-bottle caps for poker chips;
And there I found Jim’s house,
With everything changed in fifty years,
Except for the flowering snowball tree,
And that faithful old secret keeper --
The sandstone step where Leona kissed me.

JOHN REMERT

We worked for the same firm for 30 years
Selling potato chips and pretzels,
And never in all that time
Did he make a cent more than I.
Why then, I ask you, must we
Remember him just because one day
He thought up the slogan:
“When the chips are down,
Buy Perlmuter’s cheese dip.”

ODE TO A METAL WASTEBASKET

Beside my desk these many years,
O basket I salute thee;
How unchanged the Elysian scene
Embossed upon thy sides,
Where trees remain in leaf,
And sandaled runner never tires.
Wouldst that just one of all
The crumpled notes I’ve flung
Inside thee spring to life,
And by its nearness
Grasp thy runner’s
Sweet baton of immortality.

THE OLD POKER GANG

There were Kenny, who always played it close to the belt,
And Jake, who liked to raise on nothing,
And Jim, who was worried about losing his hair,
And was forever forgetting to ante up,
And Claxie, who always said, “Ya gotta have ‘em,”
And Bill, who excused himself every hour to phone his wife.

After we all enlisted,
Kenny was killed on the Northampton,
A heavy cruiser, torpedoed off Guadalcanal.
Two machine guns shredded Jake on the beach at Anzio.
Jim stepped on a land mine in France on D-Day
And still had plenty of hair when he died.
Claxie was cut down by sniper fire at Saipan,
And Bill, a remnant of the first wave
of Fourth Division Marines at Iwo, was slain by shrapnel
As he sat on the edge of his foxhole,
Writing a letter home to his wife.