My Conversation and Whiskey with Burl Ives

acid-wash
personalities
eating away the
webbing on the lawn
chairs, citronella holding
the gnats at bay, whiskey
at evening temperature,

in those
days the nights
were cool and so
was I; vain in retro-grade
self-impressed with looking
at my curvy reflection in the rich
silver mirrory deluxe Airstream, bright
pink flamingos staked into the Peyton Place
lawn - Barbara Parkins and Ryan O'Neal shopping
star beauty on Hollywood Boulevard,

Burl began
by telling me
he was from a
Scottish-Irish farming
family, then he got to the
part that didn't set well with
his unruly bushy eyebrows, he
was jailed in Utah for vagrancy for
singing Foggy, Foggy Dew; authorities
said it was a bawdy folk song, "who the
tiddly-wink f*** do they think they are?" he asked
me.

"critics who
have no talent
and what comes out
of the ass of Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer,"
I told him.

he amusingly
choked on the
whiskey he tossed
to the back of his throat -
and him being a renowned
pipe smoker, threw in some apple
tobacco and fired up my olfactory from
The Tree of Life; and then he talked about
his discography,

Riders in the Sky,
On Top of Old Smokey,
The Wild Side of Life,

the whiskey
bottle had just
a little sweat left
in it; time had suddenly
passed us by; and then he
talked about his films,

Smoky,
Sierra,
East of Eden,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
The Big Country,
Day of the Outlaw,
and . . . "Paint your Wagon
if it's the only thing you ever do, Sage,"
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives said to me...

I still have that
whiskey bottle memento,
the label as fresh as we shared
it that day - I took Burl's advice,

I painted my wagon...

I carried on with his cause
of cultural and political freedom
and his folk singing group with icons
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 - April 14, 1995)

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist