The poems of a young Southern boy who joined the military, travelled the world, got an education, made a whole big bunch of friends, came home to the woods and walks there often, happily watching birds and watching the world pass by, occasionally saying a few words at it, with a laugh and a shake of the head.

Camera of the Mind

By Stephen Orr Manning

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Stephen Orr Manning
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-3885-2

Chapter One

        The Second Birth of the Grayhair


    Returning now on remembered paths
    can the Grayhair become once more
    a barefoot kid with muddy feet
    splashing up and down some river or creek
    or is it now just memory?

    Dim at best but just how different
    these mind movies of chasing crawdads,
    long legs and dragonflies,
    minnows swimming upstream,
    waterbugs floating down?

    Three kids on a swaybacked mule named "Mule"
    stop and cut a cane for candy
    on the way to the fishing hole.
    One of them brought bread
    so all of them would have lunch.

    Siblings not of blood but of the land
    who roamed the woods, listened and learned,
    who carried a line and hook, cut a pole,
    caught a bug then a fish or two to cook upon a fire.
    With the bread it was enough for all.

    The one who arrives at this moment,
    presents himself to the energy of now,
    has new tools but worn with practice,
    is not that same muddy footed kid,
    more's the pity.


        Late Shift at Maybelle's Diner

    The only Caution light blinked yellow
    adding color to the panorama of Bonnie Sue's visible world
    of a streetlight on the far corner
    and the neon "Vacancy" aptly describing the town
    at the crossroads shared by a gas station
    that closed at nine. The constable stopped in for coffee at 10
    unless Jimmy Joe was drunk and trying
    to beat up on Sue Emma which was a real dumb thing to do
    she being twice his size and real mean.
    Bonnie Sue liked shirts with those fancy pockets
    with snap buttons that looked like pearls.
    Bonnie Sue was a sucker for any smooth talker
    that had a story about "them is real pearls
    on them buttons, they is special made in Hong Kong
    by a little old man that uses silk threads
    to cut But wait there's more to this magic day.
    em into slices. It took a long time
    so they cost a lot."
    Bonnie Sue's prince had come, but the next morning
    had turned into a frog with beer breath
    and smelly armpits. And the buttons
    like all the others came from shells
    of freshwater mussels dug out of mud
    from the bottom of the brown smelly river
    flowing through leached out dirt
    of the dying no hope town.
    Bonnie Sue would sleep awhile before
    the late shift at the diner.
    Maybe, tonight Bonnie Sue's prince would come.


        Growing Up Southern and Poor

    In the cool morning hours after midnight
    of what had been hot Southern nights,
    the radio muffled under the covers so Momma would
    not hear and come to turn it off and make me sleep
    but if lucky the sound came
    "... from high on the mountaintop
    in Gallatin, Tennessee, bringing you the sounds
    of Red, Hot and Blue"
    or what grayhairs white and black
    call rhythm and blues and played it together
    in back rooms of music stores where
    Calvin played piano and
    taught us how to play the sound
    and feel the sound
    and love the sound
    which might be the Memphis Jug Band
    an old time down home bunch blowing on
    earthenware crocks, thumping on washtub basses
    and chanting and singing their field whoops and hollers
    or maybe the Memphis Horns
    which was a real old time rhythm and blues band
    but these folks just played their horns
    and bent their notes and flatted their fifths
    that cried about good times and hard times
    and night times and ain't no time to be poor
    `cause your batteries run low right in the middle of
    Muddy Waters singing Little Red Rooster.
    You children have no idea
    what music means
    to those who came before.
    Those black boys
    who walked the cotton rows
    and those white boys
    who walked beside them
    poor but yearning just as they
    for something better and sang along
    stoop pick and drag your bag
    to earn your fifty cents.


        Brainburn

    The story is not over
    while brainburn
    still forges white-hot memories
    now fitted with a context
    to give it meaning
    like a molded vessel
    gives liquid shape.

    What were before
    onerous chores,
    some job of work
    thought hard labor by
    a child struggling
    with the heavy pail
    full of needed water,
    or the armload of firewood
    that was actually arms load
    leaving no hand free
    to open the screen door
    without dropping a few logs,
    or the mowing of grass,
    or raking of leaves,

    may now be thought
    in manhood to...