Geography Lesson

By Ernest Yates

In the poems of Geography Lesson
Ernest Yates chronicles the sights
and sounds of Philadelphia. In doing
so, he envisions a community that
accommodates the dreams of a
diverse citi zenry, and suggests how
the city itselfconcrete, glass, steel
is built of those dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483653617

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

Book preview

GEOGRAPHY LESSON

I searched ancient Chinese poets

for a wise word about love,

but they were silent on the matter.

Then i studied the world

conjured by troubadours in song, . . .

but that romance was too lofty and not mine.

Then i looked to that beacon of refinement

Hollywood

and stumbled upon bits and clips

and scraps of dialogue

too much like patter

to be any use.

So. Unsatisfied,

disappointed by all the sages of China,

Provence and Hollywood,

i finally probed my heart at home

in Philadelphia, and found

the voodoo there.

I.

PROLEGOMENON

PROLEGOMENON

On the first morning of spring, when i

opened the French doors to my living room,

i saw a mote come floating in, moved by

a wind too gentle to disturb the sky.

It was a dandelion seed, a dot

from the flimsy weed that girls blow on

to tell if their boyfriends love them, or not.

Long ago, some black cave in Sikkim

or Bhutan might have divulged an omen the way

this speck was borne in the blue. De Soto or

Cortez would feel its mystery in the play

of mulberry sprigs, that screened the wilderness

beyond, against their naked cheeks. It came

like a prophet of the unknown, whispering

through an inner space, clear as the sky, of the frame

of things that were to be, promising things—

and then it disappeared, as though it were so

intent on becoming that it had forgotten

to be, straying into my room’s shadow

to wither unregarded on a rug.

Later, while i shopped for indispensable

tools, household nuts and bolts, it occurred to me

that Mother Nature is so prodigal

the way she flings her offspring forth, stillborn.

CLAIRVOYANT

Uncannily i can see

your rooms bathed in yellow

against the darkness overhead,

a cutaway of lamplight

on an upper story miles away.

At this moment of night

your back is turned, as you pass

with brisk, businesslike

steps into another room.

I can barely hear

your stockings swish

underneath your skirt.

You are tending

a domestic task.

Your thoughts are far from me.

FACADES

I was in love, once; and again;

and then repeatedly like a bad habit

i couldn’t break.

A multiple offender trying to go straight,

i’ve learned to steel myself for my return to the street,

where love begins and ends, at the edge of concrete.

Faithful are the alleyways, the brick and stone and glass,

eternal dream of cliffs more faithful than dreams.

I walk by blank canyon walls, comforted.

Here everything is unmistakably, unchangeably,

and definitely what it is. The National Bank

does not produce a roar or whirling mist within,

where pride and pity masquerade, where tenderness

and rage prevail, depending on the turn of a wrist

or whether a head is bowed. My eyes are not enshrouded

in darkness, my ears not stopped, thin fires do not steal

along my limbs now that i’m passing the wide

casements of City Hall. Only my shadow is touched,

in a shadowy interchange. I go in a patch of gray,

warped and askew, yet perfectly conformable—

as i glide across the permanent stone—

perfectly and instantaneously conformable

to each fast trick and