Christopher Buckley: “Early Morning with Robert Bly—Santa Barbara, CA”
EARLY MORNING WITH ROBERT BLY—SANTA BARBARA, CA
I drive by a few earnest folks exercising
on the grass bordering the beach,
pause for a bit to admire the adagios
of small waves arriving on the shore. . . .
I’m turning up old Garden Street
in the general direction of a post office,
which won’t open for a while.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPuttering
along a local route, I wave motorists
ahead of me, through the 4-way STOPs
as I recall Bly’s perfect little poem
about driving into town to mail his letter,
that cosmic sense of intimacy
he cherishes in the midnight snows
of Minneapolis. . . . I think I was 23
when I first read it, going nowhere,
and it has traveled with me
all these years. . . .
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI cruise the old
San Roque neighborhood where
high school friends lived 50 years ago . . .
where I know no one now, just the palms
and agaves still leaning over lawns,
the spaces where shops and businesses
have gone to dust, replaced by car-washes,
7-11s, high-priced coffee bars.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI pass beneath
a row of great ornamental figs that were here
before me, pull over on a side street
where The Green Gables stood, best restaurant
in town . . . I close my eyes and my parents
are walking to the entrance in 1958 . . . then
start the car, turn up State Street toward
the post office that will open soon, realizing
I don’t have much more time to waste.
Christopher Buckley has edited The Long Embrace: Contemporary Poets on the Long Poems of Philip Levine, Lynx House Press, and Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets—Interviews & Essays, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2021. His work was selected for Best American Poetry 2021 and his most recent book of poetry is One Sky to the Next, winner of the Longleaf Press Book Prize, 2023.