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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Scenes || Dreams TS KERRIGAN ________________________ The Berkeley Hills Though scattered through a hundred towns, their college days long past them now, I still can feel their presence here, the girls we coaxed on autumn nights among these lonely, windswept hills. Relentless winter blows away the signatures their bodies etched on wooded slopes and meadow grass, those pathways where no trace remains of transient markings passion left. When fall transforms these glades and woods, what memories remain for them? The images of fumbling boys who drew them down in darkness once among these lonely, windswept hills? [655]
Christmas Ghosts I always sense them drawing near, Repeating all their old complaints, Those wraiths that no one else can hear. I've thrown away their letters, notes, Mislaid their faded photographs, Forgotten all their anecdotes. "Just wait," they warn. "You'll see the day, Perhaps before your body's cold, Your own effects are tossed away." The children long for Christmas Eve, The presents underneath the tree They wait for unseen hands to leave. We sit around the radio, Hear "Silver Bells" and "Silent Night," Reflect about the chance of snow. "You'll know the truth the week you die," That choir of bitter voices drones. I've learned to turn the volume high. [656]
The Monaghans They'd scour the countryside and find some grassy bed, the lissom girl beneath, the tousled boy astride. We'd see them after dark her hair of palest oak espalliered in the grass, in meadow, field, and park. Until grey fingered days brought righteous wind and rain, no patch of ground was spared these amorous forays. That hair has gone to snow from shades of palest oak. For years a vital man, arthritis brought him low. So freighted with the years, they rarely venture out, how odd they both suggest this latter love is best. [657]
El Camino Real Of all who passed this way and found these larkspur hills, this green exotic coast. Its former citrus groves (long fallen to the axe), the blue-eyed dons endured. Unlike that Spanish monk who forged this stretch of road, they came for gold, not souls. His kind could not preserve the rancho life for long; soon all were dispossessed of haciendas, land, the fragile missions left to crumble into dust. Then El Dorado rose again on Chumash shrines, the pueblos named for saints. The blue eyed dons endured, and, corpse by bloody corpse, they humanized this land. [658]
Insomniacs What are they listening for, night after night, shackled in their dark prisons like the final survivors on the planet? Their descent to the quarries of sleep wasn't barred by a noise on the stairs, the creaking timbers in the attic, a voice on the street outside. They were locked away in these shadows at a time too distant to remember by the cry of a child they didn't answer, the plea of a lover they ignored, the sum of their small monstrosities. What are they waiting for, night after night the dawn to arrive and deliver them for a time from the dark figures of the years, the afflictions of memory? [659]
Villonesque — Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? I. Please tell me, if you can, mon frère, How all those former wantons fare: The nymphets, virgins, teasers, flirts Who always acted so demure In mini, midi, maxi skirts; Nicole, I met behind the stair, Who came to me sans underwear; Gervais, who left at break of day By climbing out my window sill, A ghost in filmy lingerie. And where, mon frère, does passion go, In billets-doux, the cant of verse? And what's become of last year's snow? II. And where are all those Adelaides Whose faces blur across decades? The Angeliques of singles bars In pushup bras and clinging pants, Who incandesced like falling stars? And where's Marie, who promised bliss, But only gave me Tosca's kiss? And Madeleine, the ingenue Who followed me around for days, a lover pushing 42? And where, mon frère, does beauty go, In memory, oblivion? And what's become of last year's snow? [660]
Secretly Reading My Mother's Magazines in Childhood We had very few books and no library near That old tumbledown house at the end of the street, In that neighborhood stinking of cabbage and beer. So I savored the love lives of Allison, Dawn, All those Merediths, Ericas, Tiffanys, Belles, In my bedroom upstairs or the chaise on the lawn, Though on greater reflection those names seemed as queer As soufflé de poisson or escalopes de veau In a neighborhood stinking of cabbage and beer. And I thought to myself as I read more and more, I might find that oasis of beauty and grace And encounter those women I'd grown to adore. But a moment of truth proved my hour of despair. I'd been lied to, defrauded, seduced and betrayed, Like some pitiful character out of Flaubert. With that paradise lost, my dilemma was clear: I was trapped in a world full of Marys and Anns, In a neighborhood stinking of cabbage and beer. [661]
Aspects of Claire I see her cross the ward and swear, The way her body moves, it's Claire. But every time I call her name, It's just a nurse from down the hall Who's nothing like my Claire at all. It happens every time the same. We'd go out dancing, have some beer, She talked about a film career— How lovely Claire was then, before They sent me off to fight a war. It never once occurred to her That few come back the men they were. I read her notes out there each day, That desert half a world away. I wrote her back, described the wind. I tried to make her understand That wind which overtakes the land, Can also overtake the mind. Claire's newest film came out last May. They showed it in the ward today. I watched, but never said a word. She grows more lovely frame by frame, The girl I lost and can't reclaim. [662]
A Male Dancer's Life You're never who you think you are; The trick's pretending not to care. Imagine you, a concert star! That costume girl in sheer peignoir Admired your moves and derriere You're never who you think you are. You've learned the steps and repertoire, Affect a certain savoir-faire. Imagine you, a concert star Who strolls into an uptown bar, Baryshnikov or Fred Astaire, You're never who you think you are. Your agent says you'll go quite far With Beau Gallant your nom de guerre. We're never who we think we are. One day they repossess your car. You gain some weight and lose some hair. You're never who you think you are. Imagine you, a concert star! [663]
Elegy for an Actress I always thought we'd meet again some day, With you in pink or purple crepe de chine. We'd have a glass or two of Chardonnay And chat about the local drama scene. Instead, I sit inside a dive alone Off Fuller Street and nurse a Black and White, A place with just a single telephone, But then I won't be calling you tonight. For you there's no Millennium, no chance To rectify your failings down the years, Not even one more, free for all, romance No falling out, no last display of tears. Upstaged by Death, you've left the masquerade, Who lent a breadth to every part you played. - Hollywood, 1999 [664]
The Muslin Dress The Sunday train to Abbeyfeale Came clattering past stacks of hay, The prickly gorse and Hawthorn rows, Brought home a girl too long away. The band played Kerry polkas late That night at Tommy Tobin's place. The moment she came into view, The color rose in each lad's face. We watched her move across the room, The scarlet muslin dress she chose Revealing long and shapely legs. We'd rarely seen the like of those. And, oh, we thought, to be the man, Of all who danced with her before, To hold her in our arms that night, A heap of muslin on the floor. [665]
The Girls of Halcyon Days Unlike the sort with parasols Who chose to hone their female charms In fin de siecle horsemen's arms As soon as they'd outgrown their dolls, The girls affecting country airs Upstanding bachelors took as wives Had lived provincial social lives At Baptist socials, county fairs. They never heard, much less conceived That every carefree step they made Beyond that sheltered aspen glade Could never later be retrieved, But Life, which never goes as planned, Afflicts us all with age, disease, While meting out its grim decrees In ways we never understand. It shipped them off to drab retreats With minimal amenities, Ensconcing them with pleasantries In dismal rooms with umber sheets, Where, looking out from faded chairs, They saw the slum the years had made Of what was once an aspen glade For Baptist socials, county fairs. [666]
Storms When days of stormy skies have done their worst, And river waters rise and levees burst; When wind and rain have flooded every field And blackened all the grain and corn they yield; When men implore their gods as skies grow dark, And every two by four becomes an ark; When all are lost, diminished by their grief, And count the cost of storms with disbelief; When children doubt and wonder how we'll live, And we're without assurances to give; When we're bereft of all, except the dross, And mankind's left to calculate its loss; We'll shut our eyes against the wind and rain, And, waking, we'll arise, and build again. [667]
TS Kerrigan, now retired from the practice of law, was born in 1939 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live. He attended the University of California, Berkeley and completed graduate work at Loyola University in Los Angeles. Kerrigan is the author of the play Branches Among the Stars (Louisville, 1990), among others, and is also a theater critic and member of the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle. His plays have been produced in Los Angeles at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Globe Playhouse, among other playhouses. His poetry has appeared in various periodicals, both in the United States and Europe, and in Good Poetry (Viking, 2002), an anthology edited by Garrison Keillor. Kerrigan argued Lujan v. G&G Fire Sprinklers, Inc., before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 and received a favorable opinion from the court. Kerrigan describes his Supreme Court appearance, his first, in "Before the Supreme Court," an essay republished in the Legal Studies Forum. "Villonesque," "The Berkerley Hills," and "Christmas Ghosts" were first published in Iambs and Trochees. |
