Evening of the First Day: Poems of Philadelphia

By Ernest Yates

this companion volume to Geography Lesson, Ernest Yates continues his cycle of poems based on the streets of his home town, Philadelphia. In Evening of the First Day, those streets serve as anchor to the wandering poets dreams of community and home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493159482

Ernest Yates

Born in Ancon, Panama, and raised in New Orleans, Ernest Yates obtained a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for fifty years. Mr. Yates has published poetry in dozens of literary magazines and journals, and has won the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, among other poetry awards. For further information, please consult Mr. Yates’s website? ernestyates.com

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Copyright © 2014 by Ernest Yates.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/03/2014

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Contents

Evening of the First Day

2ND

Nubia

2nd Street Go-Go

Holy Toledo! 2nd Street

2nd Street Flutter

2nd Street Hullaballoo

Rockin’ and A-Rollin’ on 2nd Street

2nd Street Elegy

JOHNNY VALENTINE’S

Intent upon Nothing

The Tao of 2nd Street

Empty Lot

MR. SYE CLEANERS

Brass Tacks

Another Word

Two Planes

Rapture, Indeed

The Struggle

Dumpster

The Presence

Purity

Surprise, Surprise

The Weight of the World Is on My Shoulders

Observant

Etcetera

Proof

These Roads

Sky Writings

Bar Game

At Home, At Night

Walking the Line

Uplift

In Front of ALL RIGHT PARKING (Three Fragments)

Out onto Germantown Avenue, Traversing the Northern Frontier

Beyond the Last Parking Lots (A Fragment)

The Question

3RD

Theater

Ah, 3rd Street

Subjunctive Mood

Poking into Art Galleries and Shops

Whatever Life Brings

Harvest

In a Bind

After Desire Comes Philosophy

Where the Heart Is

An Old Ongoing Story

On the Calmness that is Freedom

Passing Days

Stern Lesson

Cheers

Chez Moi

Bacchanal

And Then Omoo

Shoes Full of Holes

On this Freezing Night

Fine Fair Day in Spring

Whimsy

Intersection

Cold Wind

Kenny Garrett on Sax

Inscription

Now I Looked Down

A Great Man

Context

Encounter

PANTS $19.88 AND UP

Late at Night outside D. BECKER & SONS

Free Time

Near Green Street

Reverence

AUTHOR’S NOTE

To Jacqueline

EVENING OF THE FIRST DAY

This evening’s sky is moonless and dark,

and the few street lamps scatter

only a dimness over sidewalks.

Now and then a car’s lights

sweep over facades and side walls

in ludic flicker of windows, doorways, granite steps—

successive flashes of this, that, and the other.

What else hath God wrought, anyway?

A good mate and a little wine, if we’re lucky?

Freedom, perhaps?

2ND

NUBIA

GALLERY HAMID

features African art and hand-woven tapestries.

Last night

i gazed through its window

as if i would be transported into

another world,

more exotic, more sensuous than 2nd Street.

More alive.

But what were all those ebon statuettes to me,

those illustrations of temples?

Light from street lamps

caromed from the windowpane and half-lit

the rough sidewalk.

As they passed me, a man and woman exchanged

heated words that were lost in background

noise of the street.

A neighboring gallery featured

a sign that read

LARRY BECKER CONTEMPORARY ART.

It was a cool night, and puddles left over from

daytime rains

glittered with lamplight from a nearby lot.

No, no, Nubia

and all its monuments—

temples of Satis, consort of Khnum,

alabaster cats,

caricatures of lean men in kufis

and djellabas—

had no more allure than green-

painted bricks of HAMID.