Four Poems by Lloyd Hill

Four Poems 

By Lloyd Hill

Crash Landing                                                                                                  OB Laureate Lloyd 

Tuesday afternoon       Piper PA-32         emergency lands on I-5            as I’m losing my mind

I’d come home with groceries     found my iPhone gone        from my pants pocket     I drop

 everything         dash back out the door my neighbor tells       about a plane          crashing cars     

Seen my phone?    I ask             What? no        she says    as I hurry on                retrace

my route             viewing everything          through a microscope               down the alley 

behind my     apartment building  across    Niagara Avenue  down        Surf- Check Way

to Newport Avenue           to Appletree Market              where the manager          calls my phone 

and we listen        for a ring      Nothing              He tells me this happens              all the time 

and to come back later    my mantra becomes        It’s not what happens to you.     It’s how 

you handle it      it could be worse             bleeding dead on the freeway      thousands

of people lose phones            every day it’s not the end of the world      but for me

right now    it is        I’d taken the scenic route           home from the store             so I trot 

down Newport         to Veteran’s Plaza             look around     fear         turning to      panic          

want to collar         strollers             demand my phone       I’m promising God        

all sorts                 of shit              Lifeguard station             nothing       Go home     can’t sit             

think straight             go through       milliseconds                last hour        my phone      

the plane  mechanical          problems mental errors    maybe?               twelve minutes          

back to Veteran’s Plaza       where I forgot           I’d sat on a concrete bench           retied shoe     

There          in    its Ziploc bag      scrunched                    in a corner       of the seat and armrest            

looking   like             an  abandoned candy bar       my phone      I melt and cry       and kiss 

it              a lovesick fool            I slump on the bench                   drained            happy          

but              out-of-control stress         took toll              Later           learn             people involved         

in plane-cars crash                   survived               wonder                         what they promised God            

during their ordeal     and    if      our      foxhole             religion                     will               survive

Hugging in Paradise  

Stefenie, the new yoga teacher and I hit it  

off right away blabbing code and laughing.  

In the gym right before our third class  

a moment like two magnets getting close  

snapped together and hug full body arms  

snug around each other ticking seconds  

tingling bodies spark… she’s 60, I’m 89, 

an old man’s impossible dream, but  

any negative stress has washed away  

at the ocean of my youth.  

Now I follow her poses, a bird in a ritual  

mating dance, arms, legs, torso; poses,  

cobra, warrior, downward-facing dog— 

Looking at us together in the wall mirror,  

we’re performers prepping for this season’s 

Wonderland Shows—Cinco de Mayo,  

Memorial, Independence, Labor, days, 

she the itinerant princess, I the captive king  

in a glass castle, happy in their roles, 

O gray feathery canary in a cage, sing.  

American Way of Happiness

My introduction to illicit drugs

was a grainy film shown in my dusty

sixth-grade classroom. Reefer Madness

showed teenagers smoking marijuana

laughing mindlessly on their way to ruin.

A Junior Patrol Boy doesn’t do that.

I had potential. In college I learned

money was the key to a good life.

I’d also learned that in the beginning

was the root word (h)app, meant lucky.

Good fortune, right parents and country.

But St. Augustine said True happiness

is unattainable in our present life. But

a benevolent creator smiles on our efforts

to be happy in this life as well as the next.

The poet must suffer to write true -- this

is the knot he must undo. Yes, no. yes, no,

like a computer’s ones and zeros.

James Wright ends his famous poem;

I have wasted my life.

So, I must go back to Salon, the ancient Greek

who said, Call no man happy until he is dead.

There’s always something

to look forward to.

Radio Waves in Paradise 

At 3:47am the radio went on for the first time ever and a man and woman spoke simultaneous urgent gibberish about what I couldn’t interpret. Half asleep I punched multiple buttons on the clock-radio and with some fumbling around it went silent, but the episode shook me up.  

The device was the only item I took from my mother’s belongings when she died in 2013 at age100. I have since used the clock because it makes time changes automatically, kind of miraculous for an older device. Last fall’s time change I watched the red numbers display 3:00am DST, then move back to 2:00am standard time, so it’s connected in some way to the universe.  

Yesterday, a new resident at the retirement home gave a talk on ham radio. He’s an amateur emergency frequency operator and with his complex metal cased radio he can talk to anyone worldwide and even into space, when no other modern communication is functional, like an apocalypse.  

So, what’s going on here? I would love to talk to Mom about heaven, or Stephen Hawking about time, or some rapid-speech couple about space communication. Anyway, it looks like I’m tuned in. Midmorning’s a better time for me.  

Author Bio:

Lloyd Hill, SDSU, longtime Ocean Beach poet. Spoken word to lyric, cafes to classrooms to zooms. Winner Musings poetry prize. Pier Poets Theater Performance. Published: San Diego Poetry Annual, City Beat, Serving House Journal, The Stories Start Here, Amazing Writers, and elsewhere.