PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Although the time had come, that day, to my my third visit to the Dining Hall (unlimited seconds, plenty of iced tea with lemon, and, once in a while, chocolate mint ice cream).  The group with whom I took my meals consisted mostly of upperclassmen; and I had been informed that I was expected to listen, more than to talk; and, very often, one or another of them would resort to that (then) usual phrase to put freshmen in their place---"I'm sorry, I have forgotten your name."  After ten weeks?  These supposedly serious scholars, already planning their post-graduate work?

   So I was in no hurry to arriive at the Dining Hall, and in a great hurry to return to my hometown, to my parent's home, where, despite the presence of Lloyd and Betty, I would be able to see my Beloved Cerulean, if the frienship had endured my long absence at college, since Thursday, September 9th, 1976.  So, quite casually, I climbed the stairs to the fifth, and top, floor of the administration building, called Recitation Hall.  (Being of very old construction, the building did not offer elevator service.)  The rooms on that floor, used for storage of old files, were locked; but the corridor was quite spacious, and featured very large, windows.  I walked to the west side of that floor of this most westward building on campus.  From its height, I could see I-70 in the beauty of the first glow of the beginning sunset.  The trafiic was flowing briskly---cars and semitrucks, perhaps all of them (at least the trucks) with c.b.'s.  My c.b. radio was at home (I hoped, although I---unfarily---suspected that my parents might have disposed of it); the c.b. radio that had meant, and would still mean, so much to Cerulean and me; the c.b. on which I was not "Fairy Jerry" (even at college, that designation haunted me), but "Starwatcher" (from which my appellation, Starward, evolved with the help of the Christian Poet, Thomas S. Jones' sonnet, "Saint Benedict").  Westward on I70 was the Hoke Road exit, and from there just a few moments to my hometown, to my parents' house, and to---I so dearly and desperately hoped---Cerulean's presence.  And as I watched all those vehicles, westward bound, most of which would probably pass right on by the Hoke exit, I felt an assurance, and with it, a sense of myself as still as intact as the day before I arrived here, as still intact as I had been during all those summer days and nights spent with Cerulean.  The college, and the upperclassmen who constantly forgot my name, or said that they did, could not sever that part from me.  

    I watched the highway for quite some time, and then descended again those flights of stairs, and then on to the Dining Hall.  The table where I usually sat was, by that time, empty:  they had no reason to have waited for me, and I did not care that they had not waited for me.  I was, in fact, relieved that I could eat alone, meditating on the viewing experience I had just enjoyed, and counting down the hours until the evening of Tuesday, November 23rd, when my parents would arrive, convey me and the meager possessions I has brought, and the clumsy and awkward poetry I was then attempting to write, to their home, the home in which I had grown up (the home that, I hoped, would be less difficult due to the coming holidays); and thus conveyed, I would see Cerulean.  

     Due to random circumstances, my only final for the term, for Political Science 101, was scheduled for Saturday Morning.  My time would then be free from the last page of the test until Tuesday evening; and I had just purchased a paperback copy of Boris Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago (as I write this now, I am beginning to watch, again, the film from 1965).  This great novel about a Poet, who loves and is separated from his Beloved by uncaring forces beyond his control, and then reunited, and then, finally, separated again, seemed very much like the pattern my life had followed.  Thinking that might have been an act of hubris on my part, at only eighteen years of age, but it proved to be prophetic of future events; for Cerulean and I would, indeed, be ultimately separated (not by Bolsheviks, but by one as evil as they were, whom I have called Bituminous AssFault; that sonofabitch addicted my Beloved Cerulean to drugs, and to a style of life in which I could never have participated).  But all that was beyond me.  I had already studied my notes from class,while my roommate had not; now, this Friday evening, when pre-packed care packages, purchased by freshmen parents weeks in advance, would be delivered, I would enjoy the candies in mine while he sweated over the exam.  PoliSci was the only class we took together, and would be the only one for our four years there.  He had told me, quite forcefully, on Sunday, September 12th, the day before classes began, that we would neither be eating together, or sitting together in our one shared class, henceforth.  I did not mind to relax, eat my candy, and listen to my stereo through headphones, while he struggled to cram.  

Starward