Poems by Steven M. Smith

When Vincent van Gogh, Don McLean, and Mimi Griswold Meet

in memory of Mary “Mimi” Griswold (1957 – 2025), founder and longtime host of TK99’s Sunday morning radio show Blue Moon Café

After the handshakes and hugs,
there will be an everlasting bond
of palette, guitar, and radio.
Vincent will greet Don
with sunflowers painted
and framed on mountain sides in the sky—
not castle walls.
And Don, with his guitar,
and Mimi, with her radio show mic forever live on the air,
will occupy empty chairs
that Vincent will paint, and those too
will be framed on mountain sides in the sky—
not castle walls.

And when the rest of us arrive and meet them,
we will all look and listen.  And we will all
understand what they had to say.
Empty chairs waiting for each of us.

 

Retirement    

is reclining in a gravity chair 
in the backyard lap of her luxury
with ice cubes tinkling in a glass
tumbler balanced on my laid-back
rising and falling and rising chest,
watching the bees and butterflies go
to work in the trellised honeysuckle,
and no need for an old radio when all
these birds are singing down a storm.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Stuntboy Originally Grounded for Life Still Hopes for an Expungement

Stuntboy dove out the upstairs rear window
of the garage to the picnic table that broke in two
and left a three-inch redwood sliver in his forearm.

You see he was James Darren a.k.a. Dr. Tony Newman
falling through time, rolling onto the deck
of the Titanic in an episode of The Time Tunnel.

Stuntboy stood on the creaky arm of the couch,
and when he jumped his head put a hole
in the ceiling; then he missed the couch cushions
as he swung sideways into his mother’s favorite
floor lamp, shattering its milk glass shade.

You see he was Robert Conrad a.k.a. James West
leaping from a saloon balcony to a chandelier
in an episode of The Wild Wild West.

Stuntboy stole his sister’s bike, pedaled downhill,
and went airborne over the freight train tracks
and ended up all tangled up in a farmer’s electric fence. 

You see he was Steve McQueen a.k.a. Capt. Virgil Hilts
fleeing on a motorcycle across a countryside of barbed wire,
trying to outrun German soldiers in The Great Escape.

Now in his middle sixties, Stuntboy once again pleads
with his mother to have his record cleared.  And just for a moment,
she stops knitting scarves for the great-grandchildren,
cocks her head of brilliant white, peers over her glasses,
and offers that ageless, all-too-familiar sigh.