"How long has your light been blinkin'?
How long, we're left here thinkin'.
How long is now pushed to the limit.
How long to get used to the world, without you in it?"
Clarence Tilton (Oil Light)
Thanksgiving at Barley Street
I’m at Barley Street Tavern. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, two-thousand twelve.
Matt Cox has put on one of his all-star shows to raise money to feed the poor.
I love these all-star shows; singers in the round. I remember hearin’ Kyle and Cass
sing together once - thinkin’ they sounded kind of like Marty Balin and Grace Slick.
(This was before I’d stopped drinkin’ on account of my DUI.)
Of course Kyle doesn’t work at Barley Street anymore. He’s moved to Colorado.
But we’ve still got Juan, one of the nicest people to ever walk the planet.
(How many Barley Street bartenders does it take to change a light bulb? Just Juan.)
I remember him tellin’ me about Glacier Creek at Matt and Emily’s reception.
He had just started working there. I go there a lot these days. I didn’t know he’d
passed on until nearly a year afterward. That’s one drawback to bein' a hermit.
I have so many memories of Barley Street. Seen so many great shows there.
The night Travelling Mercies closed out the OEA Showcase. The whole audience
standing in front of the stage. Jeremy, slightly drunk, that wild look in his eyes,
the Travelling Preacher putting on perhaps the finest show of his life.
And me, when it was all over, walking to my car alone in the darkness,
singing to myself as I often did, “I am a man of constant sorrow”.
But right now I’m mostly thinking of that one Thanksgiving eve.
Sitting with Gary Flanagan, talking about going to see Johnny Rivers together
the next time he happened to be in the area. Unfortunately it never came to pass.
I had no way of knowing I’d never see Gary again.
And now Barley Street Tavern is closed.
Over the years I’ve learned that life goes on. We must accept things as they are.
So now, mostly, I feel a sense of Thanksgiving. I appreciate what I've had.
Naturally I feel some regret, that I’ll never experience these things again.
But at the same time I can feel thankful, that they ever happened at all.
Mark Sebring (2021)
For some time I'd been thinking I was finished as a poet, but here is my first poem of 2021.
And as I study it, I realize it was something I needed to write.
(It was necessary because I've been struggling with the detrimental side of nostalgia.)
It's a Thanksgiving story about being thankful for things we had but don't have anymore,
including people we've cared about and lost. We are often given gifts that do not last.
We must learn to appreciate that we were given them in the first place
instead of endlessly grieving over the fact that they are gone.
I still think I'm pretty much finished as a poet.
This was kind of a one-off deal.
It's time to fade into the background again.
L'Homme Solitaire... 🚶♂️
Questions, unquestioned discoveries, and answers in parable and rhyme…. This collection records a journey starting with a 1960s retrospective and the first man on the moon, moving to a new millennium welcomed in with a terrorist spin, family crises,
Robin Ouzman Hislop's poetry is certainly in dialogue with some of the key architects of the 'poetics of indeterminacy' – both the Modernist strands represented by the likes of Beckett and Stein, and the postmodernist strands represented, initially,
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How long, we're left here thinkin'.
How long is now pushed to the limit.
How long to get used to the world, without you in it?"
Clarence Tilton (Oil Light)
Thanksgiving at Barley Street
I’m at Barley Street Tavern. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, two-thousand twelve.
Matt Cox has put on one of his all-star shows to raise money to feed the poor.
I love these all-star shows; singers in the round. I remember hearin’ Kyle and Cass
sing together once - thinkin’ they sounded kind of like Marty Balin and Grace Slick.
(This was before I’d stopped drinkin’ on account of my DUI.)
Of course Kyle doesn’t work at Barley Street anymore. He’s moved to Colorado.
But we’ve still got Juan, one of the nicest people to ever walk the planet.
(How many Barley Street bartenders does it take to change a light bulb? Just Juan.)
I remember him tellin’ me about Glacier Creek at Matt and Emily’s reception.
He had just started working there. I go there a lot these days. I didn’t know he’d
passed on until nearly a year afterward. That’s one drawback to bein' a hermit.
I have so many memories of Barley Street. Seen so many great shows there.
The night Travelling Mercies closed out the OEA Showcase. The whole audience
standing in front of the stage. Jeremy, slightly drunk, that wild look in his eyes,
the Travelling Preacher putting on perhaps the finest show of his life.
And me, when it was all over, walking to my car alone in the darkness,
singing to myself as I often did, “I am a man of constant sorrow”.
But right now I’m mostly thinking of that one Thanksgiving eve.
Sitting with Gary Flanagan, talking about going to see Johnny Rivers together
the next time he happened to be in the area. Unfortunately it never came to pass.
I had no way of knowing I’d never see Gary again.
And now Barley Street Tavern is closed.
Over the years I’ve learned that life goes on. We must accept things as they are.
So now, mostly, I feel a sense of Thanksgiving. I appreciate what I've had.
Naturally I feel some regret, that I’ll never experience these things again.
But at the same time I can feel thankful, that they ever happened at all.
Mark Sebring (2021)
For some time I'd been thinking I was finished as a poet, but here is my first poem of 2021.
And as I study it, I realize it was something I needed to write.
(It was necessary because I've been struggling with the detrimental side of nostalgia.)
It's a Thanksgiving story about being thankful for things we had but don't have anymore,
including people we've cared about and lost. We are often given gifts that do not last.
We must learn to appreciate that we were given them in the first place
instead of endlessly grieving over the fact that they are gone.
I still think I'm pretty much finished as a poet.
This was kind of a one-off deal.
It's time to fade into the background again.
L'Homme Solitaire... 🚶♂️