24. Rich Moore
The first transatlantic member of the sixty odd - for whom victory is in the doing.
Rich Moore is a diehard Midwesterner now more Westerner, having grown up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Southeastern Ohio and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past several decades. His poetry clearly reflects his Midwestern roots and sensibilities as well as his journalist background. After college, he was a newspaper reporter for five years on the North Shore of Massachusetts, about 50 miles North of Boston.
He moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1980s and shifted to marketing for technology companies but continued to write short stories on the side, none of which saw the light of day nor were shared with anyone. About 25 years ago, something changed. His writing started bubbling up as narrative poetry and he doesn’t know why. But it ignited a new passion and conviction.
A year ago, a close friend encouraged Rich to share his poetry with family and friends. That resulted in him creating Along the Way, his Substack site. Since then, he has posted a new poem about once a week.
As a fellow writer advised him, ‘When it comes to writing, victory is in the doing!’ Rich has adopted that as his mantra.
Poems
Cheating the Wind My Dog doesn't Drink Bourbon The Lady in the Mirror Geological Time 5 Feet 20 Years Apart Dad's Plaid Coat
Cheating the Wind
You see it in the cracks and lines in his wizened face, years of cheating the wind and being chased by ghosts deep in the water and deep in his bones. You see it in his hands, worn and calloused from years of pulling lines and trimming sails to bring his boat about and head in a new direction. You see it in his eyes, wary and weary, focused every day on tedious tasks to keep the ghosts at bay. Ghosts of good friends, memories of them disappearing, ghosts of a dad impossible to please, no measuring up no matter how hard he worked or what he achieved. He sought and found solace at sea, plowing coastal water in old sailboats, drowning himself above the surface, plying his own dark water with his own dark spirits that quieted the ghosts. Now he sits and watches over a quiet harbor, his latest old boat bobbing and rocking with the tides, its rigging clinking like a chime, him rubbing his hands and blinking his eyes, finally smiling, clearly recounting the good times. <<<
My Dog Doesn’t Drink Bourbon
My dog doesn’t drink bourbon. But she likes to sit with me in the early evening while I do. We like to sit on the flat stone steps atop our front yard, me on a step or two higher than her, she sitting up on her haunches, one step below me, alert and eyes forward. As soon as she hears the ice in my tumbler, upon my first sip, she turns her head, tips it a bit, arches her eyebrows above her big dark eyes, then sniffs toward my face. If I were to guess, I’d guess she’s wondering why I'm sitting so low to the ground, like her, and trying to understand why I’m so quiet and contemplative. She returns her gaze forward and lifts her hind quarters, her well-worn signal for me to rub her head and shoulders, her back, and ultimately, her achy old hips. Then we stop and stare together into the crisp December sky, the sun melting into the horizon, giving way to streaks and wisps of pink, light blue, and orange, all melding into a faded palette of pastel hues. I sip my bourbon and my dog sits quietly, turns again and gives me another one of her inquisitive looks. If I were to guess, I’d guess she’s wondering what the hell I’m doing, and marveling at what I find so marvelous about something she sees as so natural and normal. She likely keeps wondering why people are so strange, then is distracted by a crow landing on our picket fence or a squirrel racing up a tree across the street. Once the distractions have loosened their grip on her brain and she’s regained her senses, she stands up, walks down a couple of steps and trots across the yard toward the back door: ‘He’ll feed me soon!” <<<
The Lady in The Mirror
She holds the photo between the fingers of her left hand and turns it over in search of a date and a place. She straightens in her chair and runs the fingers of her right hand along the side of her head, pushing wet hair back off her face. The young woman in the photo stares straight into the camera, smiling softly as she leans back atop the old stone wall. Her eyes are bright and full of life, her face smooth and relaxed showing none of the lines of strain that will come later. The sun in the photo is bright but it’s clearly a cold day as the woman on the wall wears a heavy black sweater pulled tightly up around her neck. The woman holding the photo turns it over again, then again. But there’s no indication of when or where it was taken. It arrived in the mail that morning with a simple card and message: ‘Found this today in a favorite old book. So many memories! Your friend, T.’ The woman holding the photo looks up from her dining room table and catches her reflection in the mirror. She leans back, smiles softly, her eyes grow bright. She returns her gaze to the photo, and remembers that day. <<<
Geological Time
Our geological clock has no hands, no numbers, nothing designating seconds, minutes or hours. Its face is our natural landscape and it marks time using spires and fins stacked up at places like Canyonlands…. By the majesty of formations like Delicate Arch and the artistry of Looking Glass Rock and the vibrant glow of the red rock walls and sharp ridges surrounding Moab. The clock has no chimes, other than occasional claps of thunder created by jagged bolts of lightening on the horizon, echoing for miles around. It delineates eons by the sandwiched layers of salt and sandstone left behind and the deep, meandering gorges revealed millions of years ago by the receding sea. Little remains of the sea that once covered this land, other than the muddy ribbons of the Colorado and Green rivers flowing through opposite sides of this expanse before they meet at their confluence. The clock has no pendulum nor stem to wind it, no cord to plug it in for it’s a perpetual machine powered by a cool morning breeze that gives way, slowly, to the warmth of the desert sun that keeps it running into the evening when the wind picks up strong enough to power it through the night and make any tent sound like it’s coming apart or look like a pounding heart. No, this clock has no springs or ratchets, no hammers no brackets, no intricate flirts, or lugs, pallets or crutches, no barrels or wheels, no balances or weights. It’s not mechanical, it's ethereal, gauging our stewardship rather than our punctuality. <<<
Five Feet, Twenty Years Apart
They sit five feet and twenty years apart. Her hazel eyes still dance with a bit of mischief, but are tired and weary, impossible to hide the years of worry and toil and burden of motherhood. He’s twenty years behind her, her first and oldest with eyes that show their own worry and wear yet still hold a softness for most all she says. She talks and talks in rambling disjointed circular monologues, mostly starting a conversation with distant details of convoluted context and quickly snaps at questions about her intent with ‘Well, let me finish. I’m trying to tell you!’ It’s frustrating and frequently infuriating but he takes a breath, reminds himself of the twenty-year difference and attempts to acquiesce. They’re five feet apart on her front porch, sitting in wide armed white wicker chairs, sharing a bottle of rose, a bowl of olives, a board of cheese and hummus and carrots, pita chips, and pepper salami that she’s convinced will be too spicy and make her choke, plus the wine’s too cold for her COPD throat. Along with her concern about salt in the salami and acid in the thin slice of backyard tomato she just ate, she doesn’t understand how anyone could vote for that man, what the Supreme Court was thinking when it overturned Roe, or why her geraniums look so lousy when just a week ago they were gorgeous, full and vibrant red. ‘Look at those plants over in Carol’s yard, just bursting,’ she says, then adds, ‘I think someone’s dog peed on mine.’ She sips the rose. He just stares into her hazel eyes and doesn’t know what to say. It’s the silence in such conversations that seem to un-nerve her, the void an unknown she wants to fill before it gets too big and engulfs her. He wonders about her partial and her sunken cheeks, her thinning hair, worries about her balance and lack of it, her waning sense of adventure and fear about nearly everything outside her door beyond her porch. He worries about how much time she spends watching CNN and her special daytime show and how little time she spends in the sunshine and breathing fresh air. She waters the fern, deadheads the sad geraniums, and notes with glee all the buds and blooms on her hostas. He stares into her hazel eyes and knows it’s wise to let her go, let her meander through her days not to his projected expectations but to her priorities and shifting motivations. She sips her rose and cracks a soft smile: ‘Let's have another slice of that tomato.’ <<<
Dad’s Plaid Coat
Wonder what became of Dad’s plaid winter coat? Heavy wool with grey flannel lining, black and white tweed with tiny flecks of red, mid-thigh length with dark horn buttons. He'd stuff his well-worn black leather gloves into the pockets of that coat and pop the collar when it was really cold. When he got home from work he’d throw his coat over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the landing that turned and went further up to the second floor. I always checked his pockets for a piece of gum or a Tootsie Roll but usually just found his pack of Marlboros, a book of matches, and his car keys. I’d pull his coat off the banister and put it on along with his gloves, all of it dwarfing my little boy’s body. He was a stylish guy with his plaid coat, grey flannel slacks, crisp white shirt, skinny striped tie, and shiny thick-soled black wingtip shoes. I vividly recall that coat with its comforting scent of my dad’s Clubman after shave mixed with a hint of cigarette smoke. I vividly recall that coat but can’t remember the sound of his voice, now lost in the fog of time, 20 plus years since he passed. I bet his coat is tucked away in some long-forgotten cardboard box, likely in a deserted closet in some remote Salvation Army storage facility or the attic of the First Baptist Church down on Fourth Street, all taped up and covered in dust. I wonder if I found that box and opened it and found Dad’s coat if I’d also find his voice? <<<
Geological time - that one gets me. It's a thinker, and I like the language. and approach.