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Gary Paul Lehman These four submissions are by Gary Paul Lehman who runs a poetry circle for people over 50 at a college. He writes that "Even for those who have never written a poem in their lives, writing poetry provides more therapy than a room full of Freuds. In fact, the most likely person to stay for more than three classes is a retired therapist. They tell me they spent their lives listening and worrying about other people's problems and didn't ever really give themselves permission to take time to work out their own issues to any depth. Poetry does that and more. Thanks for reading my poems. Gary" Little Jenna overpowered the skis with an act of sheer will power. Stiff and half fearful, she leaned forward from the waist, knees taut as curtain rods. Each particle of snow was her foe, each mound and furrow a formidable opponent.
Powerful Jenna took the hill by storm, a mental storm, that encompassed her two brothers waiting cynically at the slope’s bottom. She willed herself not to fall, not to show the slightest trace of trying.
Timid Jenna took not one sliver of a moment to enjoy the ride, not for a second. There was no room for error. The snow simply had to part before her feet. Neither a reckless teen nor a misguided beginner could distract her.
Proud Jenna sat in the clubhouse dangling her feet from the picnic bench sipping her cola. She said little. Only occasionally could you see the sparkle in her eyes that meant that Jenna knew she had done a very fine thing, despite what the boys had said.
by Gary Lehman
Three Dreams by Gary Lehmann
In the bus station, just after the 3:15 to Chicago leaves from Gate 2, the girl behind the snack counter picks up a paperback. Her tight black smock shows off her shapeliness. Her blond hair glistens in the sunlight, but no one notices.
Her breasts heave regularly as she reads of old Ireland, the land where Madame N explains to Charlotte, her daughter, the many reasons why she should not marry the Rumanian Prince, down on his luck, yet handsome and full of life.
The girl suddenly shifts her head to one side, pulling back a long strand of hair just in time to notice a young man waiting at the cash register. “A pack of Camels,” he says, as their eyes meet indifferently. A recent graduate of Binghamton HS, the young man
is using his travel money from the Navy to return to San Diego as slowly as possible. There is no one at home who really needs to see him for more than a few hours and besides he finds that the bus is always filled with vivid subjects for his imagination, which is more than Binghamton can supply. No one really minds his daydreaming.
He lights a cigarette and uses the smoke screen to eye an older woman, slumped in a chair across the way. She is overweight and yet oddly flashy in her bright flowered dress. Her mind floats out on an amphetamine cloud to a party at the Rifle Range pavilion when she was young and
had a pretty thigh to show off to the goggle-eyed boys like the one across the way. She is secretly undressing herself, feeling her sheer panties, lace bra, and fine hose. “What is the point,” she wonders, “of dreaming in a bus station, where no one will ever go anywhere?” The boy shifts his attention. The girl turns the page.
Closing Up the Boat by Gary Lehmann
After mother died, I returned to Virginia with father to close up the boat where they lived for the last years with so much joy.
After her cancer and sudden death, the boat became uninhabitable. It had to be sold. We tied and stowed dock lines and folded canvas covers. It was an effort to speak. What was there to say?
To escape the general gloom, I walked alone inside Marina Mall and became enamored of a Peanut Pendulum clock which struck the hours and had a pleasant ticking.
At home the chime sounded too loud and the constant ticking bothered me. Now it adorns my living room, a coffin with a silent ticker that does not chime.
Sorrow’s eye Richard II -- Act Two, scene one
by Gary Lehmann
Glazed over by blinding tears, sorrow’s eye sees not what is but what is no longer. Why is death so strong or love so weak? Why is fate so cruel or time so fleeting? Sorrow’s eye divides one thing entire into its many terrors -- straining understanding.
When griefs do come, they come like so many ignorant armies all in disarray. Confusion reigns in sorrow’s eye, too many causes contend in fearsome battle, yet eyed awry we do at length distinguish faint shadows amidst this chaos.
Look but awry upon sorrow’s eye and these legionary shapes of grief will decamp the field of the mind abandoning their misty campfires to the sunny day. All these shadows are nought but sorrow’s eye staring back.
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