I cleaned this poem up quite a bit a while back, prior to submitting material for a chapbook contest (I lost) sponsored by the North Carolina Writers' Network (those grapes, it will be noted, were, in point of fact, sour). It originally contained a rather heroic amount of profanity.
One of the earliest in the Yet-another-poem-for-Chris series, it has largely to do with people with whom I've lost contact, but it has more to do with the importance and techniques of ego maintenance. Rebecca was a girl I met my first year in college, and she would either be amused as hell or mortified beyond words at her inclusion here. She was a dainty Christian who, for recreation, worked the pitt crew at NASCAR races - and I mean, like, changing tires and such. She helped me through a very, very bad time, and I thanked her for it, and I never saw her again. I felt guilty about that for the longest time, although I never managed to figure out precisely WHY I felt guilty. I finally reached the conclusion that Rebecca, for right and selfish reasons, decided she had done as much as she could for me, and that she needed to turn her attentions away and take care of herself.
The next segment actually refers to a nearly unending sequence of kids I knew while living in Boone, NC. They were largely kids who had some kind of talent, were generally free spirits, were fun to be with, and then before you knew it they had been living on someone's floor for 3 weeks, hadn't washed their clothes or themselves during said period, and had eaten everything in the fridge but the baking soda (and, in one case I observed, the baking soda). On leaving Boone, literally dozens of people told me they'd stay in touch. I haven't talked to anyone from Boone in years.
Following this is a nod to our late college years. We were (both) reading stuff that was, practically speaking, over our heads and beyond our grasps. (To our credit, we both managed to chew almost anything we bit off. They were halcyon days indeed.) It wasn't until later, when we were both ensconsed in our respective grad programs, that we began to see through the scrim: not all of these guys were telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them Aristotle. It wasn't as wholly satisfying as I make it out to be; sometimes a project or a point of argumentation depended on one of these guys being genuinely right, and if we saw through their argument, well, dammit, we were stuck!
And here's the part the poem leaves out: at some point during my second year of grad school, shortly after Miles Davis died, Chris and I had a falling out. I don't know to this day what it was I said, but Chris began to hear everything I said as making him out to be stupid and wrong. This was not my intent, but before I knew it we weren't talking anymore. The chill lasted nearly two years.
By the time I finally decided to quit the mountains, my reconciliation with Chris was of prime importance. I was in this rotten relationship with a girl I had loved very much, I was drinking like an idiot, I was trying very hard to hang on to any semblance of self-respect I had left, and failing very badly. When, finally, I got it together and split for Charlotte, Chris was my real life line. Hundreds of 3 AM phone calls later, I slipped quietly into a state of greater self-assurance. I wasn't wholly on my feet yet, but I was at least able to hold my balance. By the time I found myself in Atlanta, working for Construction Market Data as a Construction Reporter and about to marry Rachelle, I realized that I owed Chris, big.
One last note here: I write alot of poems to Chris and for Chris, and here, antecdotally, is why: early on when we were in Atlanta, Rachelle brought home a copy of the Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over Tour" video. I didn't even get through the second number before I turned to her and said "Henley's the only one of these guys who still has the hop on his high hard one."
Rachelle said, and I quote: "Huh?"
I explained that what I meant was, although they were all playing well enough, Henley was the only one who looked like he was coasting, like he wasn't even touching the depths of his resources. Shortly thereafter I called Doc Nagel. After a brief hello, I let it loose: "Henley's the only one of them who still has the hop on his high hard one."
Chris said "Oh. Well, that stands to reason."
I write to Chris because he almost always gets me. That's rare.
Ironically, after having trotted this out for public view, I am chagrined to announce that neither Chris nor my wife remembers such an event ever having occurred.