When I went to Blossom, our local organic grocery this morning, to buy 2 Jongolds and granola for my breakfast the next few days, Simone was on duty, and the only other person in the store.

Simone is a young woman—mid 20’s—slender with bobbed dark hair and dark eyes, a small, pierced nose, and a fiercely acerbic mouth atop a cupped chin.  Her wit can be painful, it is so sharp, but, she is unfailingly funny and she has a mind that dances with a self-effacing brilliance.  

When she tallied my purchases this morning, she asked me if I needed a bag and I said, yes, please, I didn’t want to have the apples end up rolling around under the accelerator or brake pedals on my brief drive home.

When my caution registered, I began laughing, and told her that I remembered how, 20 years ago, when I was teaching high school English in the Florida Panhandle, I would get off work in the afternoon and drive straight to the beach most days.  On the way, while steering my way through 4 lanes of what was usually heavy traffic, I would remove my entire school teacher’s uniform, from necktie to underwear and re-attire myself in cut-offs and a T-shirt, often while drinking a beer.

And now, she said, you’re afraid you’ll kill yourself if you don’t bag your apples.

Yup, I told her, and she and I laughed together, although, I suspect, for different reasons, and I took my bagged apples and drove, safely, back to the cabin.

 

An episode of Average Mortal Radio in which, it is noted, the rains have stopped; William Stafford and the possibilities of being Fifteen are explored; Stafford reminds us that "Nobody cares if you stop here."

After yet another long hiatus Average Mortal Radio returns with music about the weather; Mary Oliver is invoked and fog horns are remarked upon.

“The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done.”
          -Richard Hugo

Mid-afternoon.  I’m back at my machine now, home from the briefest reverie, a waking nap in my absent neighbors’ hammock.  I had walked over to spread cracked corn for their ducks (as I’d promised to do while they are gone to California); on the roadside on the way, I stop beside a plush wall of wild roses, their faces blossoming in half-dollar-sized frills of pink.  Pulling one closer, I inspect it for bees, then thrust my nose into its cup.  Immediately, I smell Granny’s old house in Jasper County, Mississippi, and see her broad wrinkled forehead, her squat body, her braided crown of hair—and tears begin to grow like wild roses in my eyes.

As I feed the ducks, the black shadow of a vulture’s wings draws a dark small cloud over my head and the rocks where I cast a rain of golden grain.  Before returning home, I climb into the hammock behind their house and close my eyes.  I can feel hot sun on my unshaded cheek, the sway of the hammock, the sweep of a breeze just above bare.  I hear the hollow rattle of ravens, a sparrow’s high chir, the rough cough of crows, electric insects, robins blowing thin whistles from the top of low trees, sheep crying to each other across the pasture behind the barbed wire, and a distant plane’s angry drone. 

I think of James Wright’s poem about lying in a hammock, his concluding line:  “I have wasted my life,” and I know in my arms and my belly that I am going to die, but I cannot believe it in my head.  It is a lie and doesn’t have even the truth of the roll of a raven’s high tongue.

I have to get out of this job or get this job out of me.  The monster’s teeth tear at my stomach, my chest, my arm, the temples of my head and the temples of my heart.

What is wrong with me that I let such a trivial beast gnaw my vitals…and what is vital?  I heard this morning:  "Expect a rock to be a rock."  Now it is up to me to listen.

 

An episode of Average Mortal Radio in which Liam Bailey, musician, singer, songerwriter, reveals what it was like, what happened, and what it's like today; delightful original music from "Liam Bailey" and "Flesh & Armor" are performed; listeners are encouraged to buy more homegrown music; and Liam reveals his soul's deepest yearning. For more information about Liam, his music, his concert tours, and his CDs, please go to: www.madriverrecords.com and www.liambaileymusic.com Photograph by South

An episode in which the President (Yes, that President!) goes to Poplarville, Mississippi, (Yes, that Poplarville, Mississippi!) with a purloined lyric most curious; nattering sheep (Yes, those nattering sheep!) cannot be stilled; your host has the rich pleasure of reading Eudora Welty aloud; listeners near and far are introduced to a major work of American fiction and urged to learn more about Karen Fisher's novel, A SUDDEN COUNTRY, at www.asuddencountry.com; and the passing of yet one more fine independent bookstore is duly and sadly remarked upon.

After a month's hiatus, Average Mortal Radio re-emerges in an episode where Thoreau warns his readers about CNN; Radio Boy renounces his vulgar voyeurism; E. B. White writes of Pullman cars and fraudulent fruit; listeners are given 3 ways to make their day a better one; and all are treated to gutbucket Howlin' Wolf courtesy of Electric Shades of Blue (www.electricshadesofblue.com).

An episode of Average Mortal Radio in which our hero is betrayed by an airline with the words American and West in its name, causing him to ask the question, "Is nothing sacred anymore?"; from the air, Philadelphia lapses into a desert; where are the cedars he thought he was flying home to?; Wallace Stevens' travel habits are observed and explicated; a brilliant line by Adrienne about barcodes and the human brow is plagiarized; odd jobs in the entertainment industry are examined; and parents are enjoined to find their children some rivers and some trees.

An episode in which Ryler Dustin, Malcolm Kenyon, and Anna Wolff are introduced; Adrienne captures their fugitive images as proof of their unblurred beings; plaster sifts from the ceiling at the timbre of their voices and stones are riven by their merest bidding; a plea is made to visit them and others at poetrynight.org; a good night is had by the pilgrims who follow their progress; and all who listen are invited to chew, yes chew, on some poetry. (Post poetry: An account was rendered of street urchins electrified, but you'll have to tune in for a later episode to hear the details of this, as I am too busy at the moment combing the sodden streets of Philadelphia seaching for the shadow of the ghost of Benjamin Franklin for amplification on this topic. Adrienne and I also want to explore the question of why bikers, grown men and women leathered as cows and fringed as cedars, must cluster together in groups when they travel, like packs of middle school girls on their way to the bathroom.)

An episode, possibly a troubling one, in which our announcer bemoans his fate as a Renaissance Man; poetry is spoken, freely; and minstrels explore the aftermath of tragedy; did you hear anyone pray?