In My Room
Now it’s dark and I’m alone
but I won’t be afraid.
Beach Boys
In the mid-teen night’s darker silence,
lights out, bedroom door closed,
I lay on my back, listening
to the distant foghorn.
I sighed, turned on my AM clock radio,
kept the volume low, began to twist
the knob, scouring for stations
other than KMBY 1240.
And then, I heard a voice
beneath soft static, smooth
as denim, “Yeah, it’s the Wolfman,”
the legend I’d heard about.
He supposedly broadcast
from somewhere in Mexico,
only audible late nights
on the Central Coast.
And I listened, one hit
after another, ones
I’d rarely heard before.
I don’t recall what songs I heard
that long-ago night,
just that I was hooked
until, a few songs later,
the static rose, the music
went, and I tired, turned
the dial back to local top-40,
turned the clock-radio off,
and fell asleep as the fog
swirled outside the window
in the oaks, pines, eucalyptus
as I drifted into dreams
I no longer can remember.
The alarm went off at 6:45 A.M.
I got up, washed, shaved,
dressed, went to the kitchen
for breakfast, chatted with Mom.
I put on my jacket and left
to walk to school, a familiar
gravel-and-pine-needle sound
up Hatton Road to Ocean Avenue
to the high school. Humming
a song I’d heard that late night.
I thought of that music
all day, through English
and Math and History,
wondering if I would be able
to hear the Wolfman again
that night through static, clear,
new songs. Until then, KMBY
would suffice. My future
had seemed so bright
in the dark, cool, adolescence.
Oh, yeah, baby, in the light
I was sure was
yet to to come, the 1960s
rolling into my soft dreams.
They Also Serve
I watch the character not speaking,
the one alone on the less-lit part of the stage.
When the husband and teenage son’s
girlfriend argue downstage left, I watch
the mother upstage right, her eyes,
her posture, her wringing hands.
Whether it is the actress or the character,
the bystander’s importance looms
when all eyes but mine are on the main stage.
Then, the mother and father dialogue upstage
while the girl, tattooed and pink-streaked hair,
texts alone downstage right, sighing.
On stage or off, perhaps we are all most ourselves
apart from the main action, watching or tensing,
blinking or thinking what we will do or say next
when our turn for center stage returns, who may
be watching us closely as the intended main characters
beat each other’s arguments or selves as we,
off to the side, wish the playwright had given us
more lines or actions. While the world
gets louder and rougher, I watch each character,
silent to the side, and am grateful
for the darkness that soon envelops
everything except the three characters,
now actors bowing to the applause
as they become humans again. I watch
individual applauders to see those
on the side, otherwise unnoticed, to see
bystanders who sit and clap, who also serve,
just before the house lights come up
and we all walk gently into the good night.
Brian Cronwall is a retired English professor living in Hawai`i. He grew up in Carmel, CA, lived for many years in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and has lived on Kaua`i since 1993. His poems and a play have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and won the Oscar Wilde Award.
Now it’s dark and I’m alone
but I won’t be afraid.
Beach Boys
In the mid-teen night’s darker silence,
lights out, bedroom door closed,
I lay on my back, listening
to the distant foghorn.
I sighed, turned on my AM clock radio,
kept the volume low, began to twist
the knob, scouring for stations
other than KMBY 1240.
And then, I heard a voice
beneath soft static, smooth
as denim, “Yeah, it’s the Wolfman,”
the legend I’d heard about.
He supposedly broadcast
from somewhere in Mexico,
only audible late nights
on the Central Coast.
And I listened, one hit
after another, ones
I’d rarely heard before.
I don’t recall what songs I heard
that long-ago night,
just that I was hooked
until, a few songs later,
the static rose, the music
went, and I tired, turned
the dial back to local top-40,
turned the clock-radio off,
and fell asleep as the fog
swirled outside the window
in the oaks, pines, eucalyptus
as I drifted into dreams
I no longer can remember.
The alarm went off at 6:45 A.M.
I got up, washed, shaved,
dressed, went to the kitchen
for breakfast, chatted with Mom.
I put on my jacket and left
to walk to school, a familiar
gravel-and-pine-needle sound
up Hatton Road to Ocean Avenue
to the high school. Humming
a song I’d heard that late night.
I thought of that music
all day, through English
and Math and History,
wondering if I would be able
to hear the Wolfman again
that night through static, clear,
new songs. Until then, KMBY
would suffice. My future
had seemed so bright
in the dark, cool, adolescence.
Oh, yeah, baby, in the light
I was sure was
yet to to come, the 1960s
rolling into my soft dreams.
They Also Serve
- After watching Carter W. Lewis’s Evie’s Waltz at the Golden Bough Circle Theater, Carmel, California, June 27, 2014
I watch the character not speaking,
the one alone on the less-lit part of the stage.
When the husband and teenage son’s
girlfriend argue downstage left, I watch
the mother upstage right, her eyes,
her posture, her wringing hands.
Whether it is the actress or the character,
the bystander’s importance looms
when all eyes but mine are on the main stage.
Then, the mother and father dialogue upstage
while the girl, tattooed and pink-streaked hair,
texts alone downstage right, sighing.
On stage or off, perhaps we are all most ourselves
apart from the main action, watching or tensing,
blinking or thinking what we will do or say next
when our turn for center stage returns, who may
be watching us closely as the intended main characters
beat each other’s arguments or selves as we,
off to the side, wish the playwright had given us
more lines or actions. While the world
gets louder and rougher, I watch each character,
silent to the side, and am grateful
for the darkness that soon envelops
everything except the three characters,
now actors bowing to the applause
as they become humans again. I watch
individual applauders to see those
on the side, otherwise unnoticed, to see
bystanders who sit and clap, who also serve,
just before the house lights come up
and we all walk gently into the good night.
Brian Cronwall is a retired English professor living in Hawai`i. He grew up in Carmel, CA, lived for many years in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and has lived on Kaua`i since 1993. His poems and a play have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and won the Oscar Wilde Award.