Extracting Memoir is a Tricky Business

There's the tendency to embellish,
make the story more exciting,
of else to hide unpleasant truths,
expunge the details that make your
Grandpa Leo less than blameless,
Cousin Ruby's face go red. Facts
are facts unless you happen to realize
that one day soon you'll be midway
through Thanksgiving turkey in the
family dining room when accusations
start to fly, and there you are, the author,
choosing if you'll hold your ground
or flee, banished to a cold and lonely
coffee house: exiled while the relatives
go on with turkey and with giblet gravy,
your sister sneering at the empty place
from which you fled.

Ralph Hausser,  7/2011

Passenger Station, Texas

It keeps its memories
of big band sounds and Texas swing,
excited children on their way to far-off
Dallas, trainloads of soldiers
leaving home or comng back
at end of World War Two.
Now forlorn, its windows vibrate
only to the passing freights,
its rooms lie empty save for
now and then a boy or two
entering on some dare.
Never having seen a huge black engine
full of noise and heat and steam
that made more timid kids
run back to their father's sides,
they have no frame of reference
to make the place more than just
some dusty wooden furnishings or
secret haunt for creatures of the night.
But then, imagination has a way
of making history seem real.
So on a quiet day, if you listen carefully,
you'll hear the sound of steam from up the track,
and if you watch with eyes that still believe,
you'll see the train come rumbling past,
filled with people smiling wide.
They're going home, you see, while
the rest of us have to wait awhile
there beside the track, shaded by
the station at the city's downtown edge.

Ralph Hausser, 2010-

Naming the Gods

It's fun to speculate when the gods appeared

Days end: the people circled 'round the fire
for warmth, for company, for stories.
A desert place, as like as not, for deserts
have a way to make the mind go wandering.
Just as it was nomads, as like as not,
who had simplicity on their side.

Influenced by the moon and stars,
someone may have said:
I wonder who it is that made all this?
Not what it is, or how all this was made?
but who. From which a dozen busy minds
evolved the start of she whom we call God.

The gods themselves may well have smiled.
"Now starts the game!" one might have said,
"story tellers such as these, and not that
much to do all day. It won't be long
before we have a proper play."

Of course the people made a mess of it,
a hundred names, a hundred concepts;
all miss the mark. Describe a moonbeam's
song, or how a flower meditates on love.
No help comes from the Pantheon.
The gods will have their fun with us.

Ralph Hausser, 5/2011